Valo Coffee

Valo Coffee is located at the bottom of Bucky's Casino inside the Prescott Resort. You would think that a coffee shop tucked under a casino would feel like an afterthought. You would be wrong. Valo looks and operates like a serious specialty coffee roastery. They roast in house and the entire experience is built around the beans.

The way it works is simple and I love it. You pick a bean (see menu below) and they brew your drink with it. The espresso machine is then programmed with a profile that is specific to those beans. Valo focuses on naturally processed (dried in the sun) single origin beans and they want you to taste the difference between them. This is not a place where you grab a generic latte and walk out. It is a curated tasting experience disguised as a coffee shop. If you actually care about what your coffee tastes like (and I mean the bean itself not the syrup) this is where you should go.

What sets Valo apart from nearly every other coffee shop I have visited in Arizona (and I have been to many) is the machine. They have several Decent DE1 espresso machines. And I do not say this lightly, the DE1 is the smartest espresso machine in the world. It is a computer and software driven driven machine that gives the barista total control over water flow, pressure and temperature. The brewing process shows up as a visible graph on a screen. The barista can program a specific recipe or profile for a shot and make adjustments mid flight if needed. If you have not heard the word "recipe" used with espresso before, that is because the vast majority of machines out there have a single fixed profile built in and cannot be adjusted. Some high end machines allow one parameter to be tweaked at the most. The Decent controls every single parameter. It is essentially a flight simulator for coffee. The level of consistency and flavor precision it allows is something that was simply not possible before this machine existed.

You might be thinking why should I care about all this? Here is the super short version: To capture the best natural flavors out of coffee you want naturally processed beans at a light to low-medium roast level. But light roasts are difficult to extract. They do not behave under pressure the way a forgiving dark roast does. The coffee puck is more fragile and a standard machine with a fixed 9 bar pressure can easily destroy it or under extract it. To pull a great shot from a light roast you need precise control over water flow rate and pressure throughout the entire extraction. That is exactly what the Decent DE1 does.

Most specialty shops in Arizona are pulling shots on La Marzoccos or Nuova Simonelli (great machines). But seeing a Decent DE1 in action is a different thing entirely. Valo is using it to break espresso extraction down to a science and you can taste the result.

The team working the bar were accommodating. They wanted to make sure everything was perfect and it showed. There was no rush. If you are not familiar with the beans or their tasting notes they will walk you through the options and help you pick one based on your preferences. That kind of attention is hard to find.

I wish we had something like this closer to me in the Valley. Phoenix has an incredible craft coffee scene but I have not come across a shop down here running a Decent DE1 with this kind of bean focused approach. For now it lives in Prescott and honestly that alone is worth the drive.