In a place known more for proximity to powdery ski slopes than perfect espresso pulls, it’s easy to assume Salt Lake City couldn’t breed advanced coffee geek culture. Yet the high-desert city has become the kind of town where some cafes sell 12 ounces of roasted coffee beans for $50 and teach customers about the benefits of drinking coffee without cream or sugar.

The current coffee pioneers, who overwhelmingly prefer small-batch, direct-sourced light roasts, are working their trade everywhere from unassuming warehouses in South Salt Lake to one new spacious shrine to modern coffee drinking in downtown’s Central Ninth neighborhood. Some fire up drum roasters — forcing raw, green coffee beans to adopt hues of toffee, caramel and rich earth — while others operate lab-like coffee makers that seem capable of extracting a nuanced flavor from sand.

Coffee roasting isn’t new in this city of more than 191,000 residents; Salt Lake Roasting Company and Millcreek Coffee Roasters have been doing it for decades. But the emerging coffee craze is more closely intertwined with the farm-to-table movement, said Joseph Evans, the tattooed founder of Nobrow Coffee Werks (nobrowcoffee.com). Because of the city’s large Mormon population — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints forbids members to drink coffee or tea — there’s always been a stereotype that there are not a lot of coffee drinkers, said Mr. Evans, who is no longer affiliated with Nobrow. “But we’re a growing metropolitan area with a strong culture of food,” he said.