Acento Coffee Roasters

Other local roasters rent time on Acento's machine, which leaves the house to roast its own coffee after everyone else has cleared out for the day. The owner puts the whole difference in one word, choice, and he means it at the register: whoever is drinking picks the bean that goes in the cup, a bigger decision than most counters ask anyone to make.

Acento roasts on a Diedrich, and the shelf is farm-named rather than country-named: Finca Las Marias in Marcala is a direct trade with owner-farmer Juan Urquia, whom Acento calls a great mate. A Guji natural carries the Deri Kidame mill that processed it, and the Chiapas lot names its third-generation growers, Delmar and Fernando Moreno, though no page prints a varietal or a roast date.

Acento's first room ran a built-in shelf wall of books and indoor plants between the roasting floor and the counter, with a sky-blue La Marzocco at the bar and a surfboard leaning in the corner. The bar was live-edge slabs milled at the Made Lumber woodshop next door, which made that room partly a piece of the building it stood in.