Ultreya Coffee And Tea

The owner thought the pandemic was going to close the business and went, in her phrase, 1,000% full send: she taught herself to roast in 2020, and by February 2023 she was in Mexico with her green coffee buyer meeting women producers. The Zongolico lot out of Veracruz sends a stated share of its sales to a depulping machine for one of the women who grow it, a promise specific enough that it ends in a piece of equipment.

The drip is a rotating single origin off the house roast, the espresso rotates by season, and the cold brew steeps for eighteen hours, all of it roasted weekly in small batches on the shop's five-pound San Franciscan. The retail shelf runs deeper than the bar does, down to a Nariño lot from Huver Castillo's El Paseo at 1,300 meters, sea salt washed on a 36-hour fermentation, while no manual brew appears anywhere on the menu.

Candles, socks, puzzles and jewelry share the counter with the coffee, which is stock for a neighborhood shop rather than a tasting room. The shop's own line for this corner is that it serves the sunniest part of San Diego, and nothing here argues for more ceremony than that.