Rubicon Coffee

Rubicon roasts in Paonia, Colorado, on Highway 133, and the whole operation is built around roast-to-order shipping. Customers who care about the gap between roast date and brew date will notice the difference when the bag arrives within days; that's the pitch and it holds up in the cup. A bag roasted last Tuesday and pulled out of the freezer on Friday is a different animal from one that sat on a shelf for three months before it got to you.

The Dark Skies blend is the headliner, and it works particularly well in a Moka pot, which is a specific enough use case that it's worth taking the advice from the home brewers who already use it that way. The Guatemala medium and dark roasts cover the everyday end of the catalog. Sumatra dark is there for the people who want the heavier, earthier cup that origin produces. The Mid-Way half-decaf is the bag for drinkers who are cutting back without quitting, and it's roasted with the same attention as the full-caf bags, which is a courtesy that doesn't always extend to half-decaf at other roasters.

Not a cafe. There's no sit-down room and no pretense of one. Paonia itself is a small Western Slope town and the roastery sits on the highway running through it.

Home brewers who care about freshness from roast date, dark-roast and Moka-pot users, and customers who want a small Western Slope roaster to ship to them are the right audience. Highway 133 traffic looking for a coffee stop should keep an eye out for somewhere else in town.