Colorado's Bonfire Espresso Is Stoked With Large New Roastery

Bonfire Espresso Proprietor Charlie Chacos on the new roastery. Picture by Shawn O’Connor Images, courtesy of Bonfire Espresso.

Blazing a fair brighter path for specialty espresso within the Rockies, Colorado-based Bonfire Espresso just lately reduce the ribbon on a big new roastery and retail retailer within the rugged resort metropolis of Glenwood Springs.

Bonfire celebrated the grand opening earlier this month inside the two,250-square-foot facility, the place manufacturing started in Might about 25 miles north of Bonfire’s flagship cafe within the heart of Carbondale.

Almost twice the dimensions of Bonfire’s earlier off-site roasting house, the brand new roastery homes a Loring S15 Falcon roaster that expands capability past the Diedrich IR12 that carried Bonfire so far.

Picture by Shawn O’Connor Images, courtesy of Bonfire Espresso.

Along with extra elbow room for roasting, Bonfire’s new manufacturing digs embrace house and gear for coaching, high quality management, inexperienced espresso storage and a wider unfold for retail espresso and gear gross sales.

“Our doorways are actually open to the general public,” Bonfire Espresso Founder Charlie Chacos instructed Day by day Espresso Information. “Whereas there isn’t a cafe on web site, the retail house is designed to be a paradise for dwelling brewers.”

Within the cupping and coaching lab, Philos and Tremendous Jolly grinders by Mazzer be a part of a Mahlkönig K30 grinder close to a refurbished 2-group La Marzocco Strada MP. A Fetco batch brewer is available for drip espresso, whereas a Bunn tower retains scorching water flowing for cuppings and pourovers.

Drippers, kettles, scales, dwelling espresso machines and different gear line the retail cabinets, with clients welcome to cease in throughout open hours. Public excursions are actually obtainable, and academic occasions, cuppings and tastings are deliberate.

Picture by Shawn O’Connor Images, courtesy of Bonfire Espresso.

Chacos’ personal ardour for espresso was ignited in 1998 when he took over the Village Smithy restaurant based by his dad and mom in Carbondale, Colorado. One in every of his first strikes was to improve the espresso program, an effort that boosted income as phrase unfold and drew him deeper down the craft espresso rabbit gap.

In 2011, Chacos purchased a Carbondale cafe known as The Elevate, positioned inside an previous mercantile constructing with an early-1900s elevator nonetheless in place. As soon as used to decrease potatoes into the constructing’s basement for storage, the elevator stays a historic ingredient within the brick-and-wood house Chacos transformed and rebranded because the Bonfire Espresso cafe.

The unique Bonfire location in Carbondale. Picture by Shawn O’Connor Images, courtesy of Bonfire Espresso.

Two years later, a merger with its roasted espresso provider, Defiant Bean, reworked Bonfire right into a full-service espresso firm with its personal roastery, on-line gross sales and wholesale enterprise plus gear gross sales and repair. Bonfire was roasting within the former Defiant house till the latest relocation.

“This can be a large milestone for our 15-year-old firm,” Chacos instructed DCN. “We lastly have an area that aligns with our craft espresso model.”