I had a curious time at the NBC. It's not quite my gig, since I am on the cupper/roaster end of things, and am always a little off-put by the barista thing. But this NBC had a huge origin and roaster flavor to the programme. The hospitality is great; I don't want to sound like some cynical ingrate ... but there is something uncanny about the trip. I am used to traveling to coffee origins, and I don't have much experience in European travel at all. _snip_ a few of my comments here are being misinterpreted, probably because they are unclear so i am self-censoring a bit -- Anyway, I just feel like a troll among happy elves. And not that smiling Norwegian troll either. I'm the kind of guy who was not class president and doesn't go to high school reunions, so maybe it's just that. Clearly they have a good, cheery relationship amongst the coffee shops of Oslo and the greater Nordic area.
- Tom

With the current discussion on under-developed roast taste, I had the realization I have never cupped green coffee before. Seriously, green. The fact that as a roast develops, original compounds in the coffees are converted into intermediate ones that might not even exist in the final roasted coffee, that acids are diminished from the % content in the green, and the bittering trigonelene is reduced in roasting, I realized how interesting it would be to cup a coffee all the way through the roast. The under-roasted cups were very astringent and it takes time to process the tightening flavor and effect on the palate. The most challenging one was actually the pre-first crack roast (roughly 370 f - temperatures are approximate because I failed to record them at the time of roast). The coffee is Panama Boquete, Finca Camiseta. I will repeat this experiment with a group of cuppers later this month. -Tom

Traditional Sumatra coffees are wet-hulled. It's also called semi-washed coffee which may or may not be accurate since there are variations in methods. But wet-hulled is more exact, for these types of coffee are stripped out of the protective parchment layer when the coffee seed measures 25-50% moisture content. (Wet-process coffees are hulled when the coffee is rested for weeks-to-months and at 11% moisture or thereabouts). When the coffee has so much mositure, it is fragile. It is not the dense hard dry bean we know of as exportable green coffee, it can be torn in two between your fingers. So inevitably wet hulling damages a lot of the coffee in the process. Then the unprotected green bean is laid out to dry on patios, and can be further damaged then. Sumatra coffee goes through a lot. It is prepared by hand before export, but the level of prep and just how many of these defects you can cull out on a conveyor belt depends greatly. Here is damage I found in a reject sample,...