Coffee Cycle

The espresso is pulled by hand on a two-group Londinium spring lever, and the shop's Decent machines are programmed to mimic that lever's pressure and flow rates. Bringing in newer equipment and then teaching it to copy the manual machine is a plain admission of which one this bar actually trusts.

The company roasts its own coffee, a program that began in the fall of 2021 on a Diedrich IR-5 with a Quest M3 for samples, worked out through an arrangement with Acento Coffee Roasters in Point Loma. The retail lineup names its lots, a Honduras Finca del Carmen, an Ethiopia Arsosala Natural, a Kenya Gachatha AA and a Colombia Peñas Blancas Mossto, and not one of those listings prints a roast date.

The whole cafe is 450 square feet, doors open at six on weekdays and shut at two every day of the week. Pretty magnificent is the owner's own phrase for it, which is more affection than a room that size usually gets.