To the tune of a hip-hop soundtrack, the Slayer arrives. Set among siphons and pour overs, the monstrous machine glistens with shiny levers awaiting the steady hands of experienced baristas to make the most of the ground beans sent through it. The Slayer’s goal is to achieve the perfect cup of coffee, allowing baristas to adjust the temperature and pressure profiling of espresso to reach the pinnacle flavor in every cup.

Darkcloud Urban Coffee Lab, 2122 N. Halsted St., boasts the Midwest’s first in-house Slayer—another step forward for Chicago’s coffee industry. The advent of new technologies and implementation of manual techniques is changing the style of coffee shops around Chicago. Progressive shops are popping up throughout the city, differing in atmosphere, variety and knowledge from old world cafes and corporate giants and catering to coffee connoisseurs and casual coffee drinkers alike.

“Coffee is coming into the age of where wine was maybe 10 years ago,” said Andy Atkinson, owner of Darkcloud, which is opening this month. “People definitely understand coffee can be something more besides just my morning jolt or that burning pot of coffee I have for my family after dinner.”

Atkinson started working in the coffee business as a college job while attending Columbia. He grew increasingly interested in the coffee community when he started attending trade shows and barista competitions in the Chicago area. Moving away from the traditional Italian espresso bar environment Atkinson was used to, he gathered resources to open a progressive shop diverting from the traditional methods and atmosphere of a cafe. Instead, his shop is centered on presenting coffee to its full potential.

Starting with the basics of coffee biology, Atkinson puts his baristas through a 10-level program that usually takes 10 months. This is done to ensure quality and consistency with unique coffees such as a Costa Rican blend from the Geisha plant, a coffee bean variety. Understanding the coffee bean’s origins help baristas brew a better cup—they don’t touch a machine until the third level.

“As baristas we can’t add to the quality of the coffee,” Atkinson said. “Once it’s grown and processed, that’s where your quality comes from, but everything we do can take away from the quality. Every time we strip away from that quality, in a way we insult the farmer a little bit more. We literally are taking someone’s life work into our hands and handing it to someone [else].”

Metropolis Coffee Company, 1039 W. Granville Ave., set the stage for this mentality when it came to Chicago seven years ago. Co-owner Tony Dreyfuss has seen tremendous changes in that time and said he sees Chicago as one of the country’s leading cities when it comes to coffee. This is not only due to the intense training of the baristas but the consumer education progressive shops offer, Dreyfuss said. Metropolis recently eliminated its Italian roast and French roast altogether to get customers thinking about something other than roast level when choosing their beans.

“People are able to refer to qualities like acidity in a more intricate way, and people are more interested in single origin varietal coffees opposed to just buying a blend,” Dreyfuss said. “We’re trying to push for a greater consumer understanding of amazing coffee by roasting really good coffee and teaching people how to do it. We feel the best way to do [outreach and education] is to continually serve a good cup of coffee.”

Metropolis offers resources to new coffee shops such as its own coffee blends, ad-hoc consulting and free training for employees. The latter is a service Wormhole Coffee, 1462 N. Milwaukee Ave., takes advantage of by sending its new baristas to train there before shadowing current baristas at the coffee shop that opened in June. Now, once every three months, Wormhole baristas train with Metropolis baristas to keep their skills sharp and make sure they’re up-to-date on all the available machines.

On top of different techniques and more quality coffee, Wormhole works to differentiate itself from the rustic, quiet setting of typical cafes by bringing in a different kind of decor. The shop’s centerpiece is a Delorian reminiscent of the “Back to the Future” time machine.

“I tried to infuse some of my ’80s memories and all that jazz into my coffee shop, all the while doing weird and tasty coffee stuff that hasn’t been done before in the general area,” said Travis Schaffner, owner of Wormhole. “I just wanted to be unique and wanted to be fun and make it memorable. So far it’s been working well; people seem to find something new to look at every time they come in.”

Nick Kohout, manager of Kickstand Espresso Bar, 824 W. Belmont Ave., which opened six months ago, said while it’s important to differentiate the shop’s atmosphere from places like Starbucks and Caribou Coffee to get people in the door, the coffee’s quality should be what gets people to stay there. Not many places live up to customer’s expectations, Kohout said. According to him, there is a dissonance between the presentation and ambiance of a cafe and the quality of the product being served.

Every once in a while, the coffee shops will close down early, and all the baristas in the city will gather for a throw down. It gives shops like Darkcloud, Wormhole and Kickstand a chance to see which barista is making the best latte, and allows ideas to be exchanged, techniques to be compared and shop talk to take place.

“It’s a weird industry because for this kind of coffee everybody knows each other,” Kohout said. “It’s not too cutthroat because we don’t work in proximity of each other. It’s fun, it’s nice to know everybody, but I don’t think it will last in five to 10 years. There will be more of these kinds of places, and they’ll actually be in competition.”

For now, making money isn’t the top priority for these coffee shop owners. Instead, they are decidedly interested in boosting coffee’s level of cultural appreciation among the general public.

“You’re never going to become the next Bill Gates owning a coffee shop,” Atkinson said. “My goal is to bring people into the coffee world, let them understand that by holding things like cuppings and brewing classes we can achieve what is now the wine connoisseur. We can now open that up to the world in coffee.”