Sump Coffee lies south of Cherokee Street, eight miles from campus and well off the MetroLink corridor, so even with its reputation as the epitome of specialty coffee, perhaps more so than Blueprint Coffee, I doubt many students have made the trip to South City. But is it worth the voyage (and the price)? I mean to answer that question.

The first thing you notice about Sump is the logo. Its center is a skull of a ZZ Top-type countenance, bald with extensive beard and mustache. There is an espresso pot and line of leaves where the crossbones would be. The exterior screams business, in the sense that these people aren’t messing around.

Scott Carey is the visage and vision for Sump. He was once a patent attorney in New York City who drank coffee for the caffeine and didn’t know a macchiato from an affogato. A single Manhattan latte changed things for him. He realized the potential and variability among beans and brews, grew out his incredible biker beard and conceptualized the shop and what it could offer.

He is always inside, along with the five or so other baristas. The seating is reserved, uncushioned and simple, and the bar counter curves down the length of the main room. There is calm alternative music playing, and lighting is minimal. The multi-thousand dollar espresso machine sits to one side, and the pour-over bar is bustling further down the counter. It is impeccably clean, though the general feeling is rough, hard, unforgiving—an exact expression of Carey’s figure.

Carey tells me they roast all of their coffees in house, experimenting initially with every single-origin batch to find the specific levels of roasting that will “most align with aspects of the beans’ production.” He goes through each coffee on the menu, pointing to certain ones as more mild, more adventurous, more conservative, more playful.

“We don’t serve any syrups here,” he also says right off. I must have looked somewhat aimless, perhaps out of place; syrups, I know, are to specialty coffee as ketchup is to a $30 sirloin. I decide on one of the Kenyan coffeessd and sit down.

Carey has made a whole series of brewing videos for Sump’s website. There are instructional clips on specific subjects like grounds’ particle size and brewing methods, as well as one-of-a-kind processes used in his shop. In one, he takes us through how he brews their only iced coffee. He uses a Chemex pour-over dripper and prepares it only with a coffee from the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia, for the high citrus notes, “to mask a little bit of the bitterness that happens when you brew coffee directly on ice.” This is a “Flash Brew” process, meaning the hot coffee drips directly onto the 220 grams of ice Carey adds into the container below the filter. (He has all of this set up on a scale.) He pours in 26-27 grams of coarse grinds, and 220 grams of hot water—temperature between 195-205 degrees—over a time of one minute and 45 seconds.

It’s easy to hear that little kid inside him who finds all of this truly fascinating, and it is captivating to watch someone at play with such precision, creating something so unique. He sees possibilities in coffee that are hidden under the surface, waiting to be ground up and discovered. But he is humble about it all, and that is refreshing.

“In no way is what we’re suggesting a bright line rule,” Carey says, “in terms of ‘This is what you should do,’ and ‘This is the only way to do it.’” He is always ready to experiment and admit occasional failure.

My coffee comes in a kind of glass flask with a porcelain cup for drinking. It is fruity, flavorful, perhaps a little acidic, though exactly what I want in the morning. They don’t serve much food at Sump—a few cookies and that’s it—but for now, this cup is enough.

“The thing about coffee that’s exciting,” Carey says, “is that it’s challenging, it’s organic, it’s evolving, and as we change our perspective, it changes our perspective, and it’s this dialogue.”

Sump is not the place you would go for cheap studying energy. The coffees range from five to six dollars for a cup, and the style is like that of a bar—you pay when you leave. They expect you to hang around, and I couldn’t help but do so, listening to Carey interpret the specific beans and roasting levels. There is something romantic in this tinkering spirit, and in the ideal that something as simple as coffee can be, in Carey’s words, “this continued march, hopefully, to something perfect.”

And that, we can all agree, is priceless.