Brazil Ipanema Tree-Dried Process

Why do I keep buying Brazilian coffees? They all taste like one-dimensional, ashy coffees to me, with the exception of my beloved, Poco Fundo. Mmm, Poco Fundo (insert Homer Simpson voice)....

Anyway, I have been doing a lot of roasting for espresso lately, and I am always on the lookout for interesting coffees to add in. This one caught my eye because of the "tree dried" moniker, and the allusion to Oreo cookies in the review at Sweet Marias. Recall that I had tried a tree-dried coffee before, and it was interesting, so I bit for a pound.

I roasted this twice. The first time was in my standard treatment:

For some reason, this coffee raced from 1st to 2nd crack and got away from me. It ended up as a Vienna roast. In a second session, I blended it (pre-roast) with some Uganda Bugisu, and that was a more normal behavior during the roast.

As espresso, this was indeed redolent of an Oreo cookie. You got that chocolate cookie thing going on, with a very unusual creaminess to the body and taste that reminds you of that cookie center, which is of course nothing more than vegetable shortening and sugar.... It is certainly an interesting effect, but I found the whole thing a bit one-dimensional. It lacked that dynamism (is that a word?) that you get from a great dry-pricessed coffee, that core of spices and leather that keeps things interesting. Even blended with the Uganda, I just didn't find it interesting. Oh, well, another Brazil bites the dust. I am done with this origin, with the one exception.