Local coffee shop one of few to offer $14 a cup, siphon coffee

SALT LAKE CITY — John Piquet’s coffee speaks of a life that takes time to savor the moment. In fact, he recommends an hour to savor a single cup of his coffee.

“You block out an hour,” he explained from his coffee shop, Caffe D’Bolla. “Really, you can block out a half hour. What would you be doing with that other half an hour anyway? Take some time, hang out, enjoy the coffee.”

Piquet said Caffe D’Bolla is one of just a few dozen coffee shops on the entire continent—and perhaps just a "handful" that are "dedicated"—to offer siphon coffee through a process in which a two-chamber coffee maker utilizes vacuum and vapor pressure to produce a single-cup brew.

“This air gap between heat source and the coffee up here means that this will never reach boiling, so you can always maintain your proper brewing temperature,” Piquet explained. “It does extract more flavors in a wider, dynamic flavor range than any other coffee brewing method, and that’s factual.”

Developed in Germany in the 1800s, the process initially spread quickly around the globe. Piquet said he traveled to Japan to learn extensively about siphon coffee brewing, and now occasionally lectures internationally on the topic.

“All of our peers consider us the best at it,” he said. “Everything is about maximizing the flavor in the cup.”

Piquet recommends waiting roughly 9 minutes after the cup is served before even taking the first sip.

“It’s the changing flavors through time, the changing textures through time—it’s a realization of the complexity of coffee,” he said.

A single cup of siphon coffee at Piquet’s shop ranged from $12 to $14 on Friday.

Piquet said blocking out the extra time to savor the finer points of a cup of coffee isn’t for everyone, but it is for someone who is willing to go out of their way for great coffee in the first place.

“Every cup really matters to me,” Piquet said. “Everything that I think about you as a customer, you’re going to taste in that cup.”

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