commonly coffee

Step off the plane in Arizona and it feels like your walking on the surface of the sun. And that’s in the middle of January! Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but for a state that sees more sun and more heat than any other in the USA, would you believe it also has one of the most incredible coffee cultures!? Now, more might take their coffee iced over hot, but regardless of that minor detail this state has fast become a place that I have fallen in love with its coffee culture.

And where I want to take us this month is not to the capital, but rather to a city 90 minutes south–Tucson! I have had the privilege of visiting this city a few times, most recently last fall, and one of the coffee roasters that I just cannot get enough of happens to call this city home. And because of their amazing coffee, and their amazing team, I am thrilled to share their story this month. So give it up for PRESTA Coffee Roasters…our Coffee Roaster of the Month for May!

Hey Curtis, so great to get the chance to connect with you! Help our audience get to know you a bit better.

What’s your backstory in coffee?
I started out running a mobile cart in the lobby of a medical office. A little Nuova Simonelli Aurelia and a used Mazzer Super Jolly grinder on a heavy metal and wood counter with a water tank for hand washing and a refrigerator built in.

How did you get started?
I was a professional bike racer for 20 years and as I rode across the US and Europe I passed many little cafes which was where some of the bike and coffee parallels started for me. After my cycling career wound down I did a few small startups and raised my kids not even drinking coffee, but in 2008 after living in Italy I started to, and while visiting Denmark I tasted some lighter roasts that opened my eyes to a different side of coffee. When I returned to the US I was unable to find anything similar except in a few “3rd Wave” shops, and when the medical office offered me their lobby space I decided to give it a shot. A close friend and I built the cart and I ran it alone, but after 6 months of operating there I was able to move the cart to a brand new market opening in Tucson, Mercado San Augustine. Now the cafe there is a much more permanent fixture.

What keeps you going in coffee?
I think the newness of it. It is such an old beverage but there are such exciting things happening now. I enjoy being able to get some of the coffees that are processed using modern methods that we haven’t seen before and giving people the opportunity to taste it. We always try to have the classic “easy drinking” coffee but Presta has created a culture around having those wild funky coffees too.

Can you tell us a bit about the history of Presta? Like how long have you been around? How many cafes do you have?

The cart had its launch back in 2012, and I started operating as a roaster in 2014. Eventually the roasting space was shared with the second cafe (1st Ave). In 2022 we opened our 9th St location in a historic gas station, and moved the roasting operation into a space nearby.

How did you come up with the name?

It goes back to the parallels between coffee and cycling. A Presta-Valve is used in cycling to maintain the high pressure that the tire is under, they inflate the tires to 120 PSI which matches the 9 Bar that we traditionally use to extract espresso. 120 PSI is still the name of our Espresso Blend.

Anything else?

The success of Presta is definitely defined by the people that work for Presta. The important relationships that we build are not only the ones with importers and roasters, but also with the people on the ground and in the community. The staff packing online orders and delivering to our wholesale accounts, the people doing the production roasting over the years (a hot and dirty job), and the people that are in the cafes making coffee and engaging with the community.

Before we get much deeper, can you share with our readers what you’re drinking/enjoying these days when it comes to coffee?

I drink a lot of different coffees. We get a ton of green samples that I roast and cup to decide what new coffee we are bringing in, but then I take the leftovers home and drink most of it. I usually switch back and forth from something like an Anaerobic funky fruit bomb one day, and a super clean, washed Guatemala the next day. I drink the leaderboard collections to enjoy coffee for what it is without knowing details, and I make blends of coffee that is nearly gone. On our list right now I really love the Ethiopia – Karamo – Anaerobic Natural, and we have a lot of exciting co-fermented coffees coming soon from Rodrigo Sanchez and the Monteblanco Farm.

When it comes to specialty coffee, Tucson—as a city—perhaps doesn’t get as much respect as Phoenix does. Can you share a bit more about what the coffee culture is like there?

The specialty coffee drinkers in Tucson are dedicated. I remember bringing in a Gesha coffee years ago and watching it get old on the shelf. I didn’t let that deter me and brewed it up, serving it to my regulars and telling them about it. After a decade we can regularly bring in an expensive Gesha bean or something even more unique, and our customers are delighted to take it home. And just like then, if it doesn’t sell, we just brew it up and get people tasting it.

So when people do make the trip to Tucson and stop by one of your cafes, what can they expect?

We have great baristas and a rotating menu of fancy beverages, as well as a constantly rotating list of coffee, so if you go into 1st Ave take a moment to look at the wall of coffee on your left and the bikes hanging on the wall. If you go to the Mercado expect to be tempted by all the delicious local food, And if you go to 9th St, expect to hang out outside with your coffee date, and watch the world go by.

On your website you speak quite a bit about how everything you do as a company comes from a place of integrity and passion. Can you share more about how that practically applies to what you do?

Coffee drinkers have to trust their coffee roaster just like we have to trust our coffee producers. The practical application of integrity means providing the best information that we can about the coffees, working with farmers who have sustainable practices (social, economic, business, and environmental), and even simple things like putting the right coffee beans in a bag with the right label. We talk about passion because any coffee professional trying to make better coffee has to be passionate. There is a lot of mediocre coffee in the world and in most places that is acceptable. But it’s not acceptable for me. Presta is here because I wanted to share better coffee with Tucson. You can see that in our offering list too, a lot of the coffees we pick (after cupping 60+ each month) are not brought in because we think they will make the most money, we get them purely because we think they are interesting and worth sharing.

Could you share a bit more with our readers about your philosophy/approach to roasting coffee? What equipment do you roast on?

We have always used our 15 Kilo Joper Roaster. It’s gas fed with a cast iron drum and independent air control. My philosophy is to listen to the coffee that I am roasting. Each one is unique with different moisture content, different cracks, and different flavors that we find. I have slightly different approaches to the various processing methods that we bring in, and over the years I have built a library of profiles that I can start with when roasting a new coffee.

It was great to meet up last year at SCA Expo in Portland. And again this year in Chicago. I know you had some of your team competing during Expo. Why is it important to you and your team to compete in coffee? What did you learn from this experience?

We had a lot of fun with our Barista, Manta, competing in US Coffee Champs last year in Portland. It was exciting to bring coffee from Yemen, and use our platform to highlight the work that Mokhtar Alkhanshali is doing. We don’t always have a competitor and we didn’t in Chicago this year because I think it’s more important for me to provide the opportunity to my baristas if they are interested in competition, instead of creating an obligation to compete that I force upon someone for my own purposes.

Every year that we do have someone compete, we grow and learn from the challenges that arise, but even when we don’t compete, we see the Expo as a chance to engage with our giant coffee community. We spent our time in Chicago talking with everyone from the coffee producers to the passionate home brewer, sharing as much coffee & swag as we could carry, and sitting in lectures trying to absorb some new perspectives.

Speaking of competitions, Presta has been featured a few times in Leaderboard Coffee Game (season 13, coffee #2). What were these experiences like? What were you hoping to get out of being a part of this?

We got into an early season of Leaderboard (We first participated in Season 3) and we just see it as a really exciting way to get coffee professionals and coffee passionates involved in actively tasting different coffees without preconceived notions. It aligns easily with our goal of getting people to taste coffee. In Season 3 we sent them a Passionfruit Co-fermented Coffee (From Rodrigo Sanchez) and turned heads and which was one of the first fruit co-fermented coffees we brought in. It all comes back to sharing unique coffee with people and Leaderboard does it across the world.

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Contact Info:

web: www.prestacoffee.com
instagram: @prestacoffee
facebook: facebook.com/prestacoffee
email: wholesale@prestacoffee.com

Find their beans: If you’re looking to get your hands on some beans then definitely check out their web-store for what they’re currently roasting. 

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I just want to say a huge thank you to Curtis at Presta Coffee Roasters for being such a huge contributor to the coffee culture in Tucson. Check out their site, grab yourself some beans, and enjoy! 

Stay Caffeinated,

Tyler