On October 6th, 2011, in anticipation of the January Vail Big Beers fest, our brewmaster created a strong batch of American Barleywine.  It fermented out as predicted and then embarked on two solid months of aging.  On Sunday December 11th, we gathered ’round the tap room to sample the beer and watch the Broncos game.  Solidly warm in our bellies after one or two, the name ideas began to flow.  As the beers emptied, the minutes in the Bronco game waned, and a certain quarterback had launched another miraculous comeback.  When the last three points registered on the scoreboard, our Ale Ambassador called out, with his arms spread wide….”TEBREW.”  The Bonfire Barleywine had a name.

As we relished the simplicity of it, we thought about how beautifully the name resonated with all that Bonfire is about — community, camaraderie, beer, dogs, and goofy beer names.  Demshitz.  PINK-I.  Stranger.  And now TEBREW.  A high-octane beer that gets better as you drink it down.  Occasionally bringing you to a knee in appreciation.  It’s only appropriate that this big beer was made in a small batch, and will disappear as quickly as a crowd when the game is over.  But the fire will always burn here and the community will always have an odd beer name  and a warm bar to rally around.  Football will always broadcast on Sundays, and beer will always go great with it.

TEBREW is about celebrating victory, drowning the sorrow of loss, raising a glass and rooting for the home team.  Join us in the only place TEBREW will ever pour — at our tap room in tiny Eagle, CO.  Just make sure you bring a designated driver.  Or a really smart dog.

Lew “Vicarious Brewery Owner” White:

Lew, or “Uncle Lew” as he is known in Bonfire folklore, came on board the Bonfire train just in time to keep it moving forward.  A passionate home brewer, family man, and chainsaw wielder, Lew couldn’t sit on the sidelines while his family members carried out something close to his perfect-life dream, so he found a way to acquire 3% of the company, if only so that he could have an excuse to visit Colorado from his bunker in western New York.  Lew had a long career in IT with Kodak before landing the long coveted “summers off” job with his local school district.  Father to a world class runner daughter, and a California dreamin’ son, Lew also had a hand in inspiring the Bonfire Delivery Vehicle.  He acquired a similar Bi-Recreational All-Terrain Transporter when one of Bonfire’s co-founders was young and impressionable, and managed to keep it running for several years with only the reverse gear functioning, using it as a wood truck at his sprawling compound and occasionally bagging a buck with it.  For whatever reason, this planted the Subaru Seed in said founder’s brain, which has now grown into full-on Subaru Syndrome.  You can high-five Lew when he visits the Bonfire for the first time in August, and also look forward to some of his recipes showing up on the board.  He has also submitted his resume several times, and is first in line to head up our IT department.  Or maybe our AARP marketing efforts, depending on when we’re able to hire him.

We get asked this question often.  Answering it is always simple — it began with beer.  A mad scientist of sorts creating a machine in the garage that churned out deliciousness.  Two roommates that wanted to see beer come out of the wall.  And the bubbling desire to create a product and a place the entire community could embrace.

Our location became available at precisely the right time for us to jump in.  A team came together to create what people mean when they say “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  The legal structure was created, the business plan was written, the sweat and labor were expended, and many cardboard boxes of PBR were dispensed with.

Much of what you see now at 127 Second St. was a part of the vision from the very beginning — the size of the system, the shuffleboard table, the type of beers we liked, even the style of bar stools.  And much of it came along as inspiration or happenstance as we continued to push forward.  Our bar top?  A gentleman happened to be tearing down one of Eagle’s oldest buildings during the summer months we were under construction — our bar is now built completely from reclaimed materials with more history than Wikipedia.  The tap box?  Born of the same wood and some creative welding.

What has and always will drive us is the overarching goal to create a revolving energy between our place and our product.  Beer is a social lubricant and it is intended for consumption in an environment that takes full advantage of that.  That concept has remained static since the day in our living room, when we landed on the name “Bonfire.”  Each of us enjoyed our first glass of liquid courage around a bonfire with friends — now we’re simply hosting the same sort of fire for a town of 6,000 people.

There are always hurdles to clear (or in our case, incinerate), but our focus remains white-hot and you can feel the warmth every time you step through our doors.

Amanda’s Bonfire Odyssey began when she agreed to design a logo for us.  Shortly thereafter, we convinced/begged/forced (pick one) her to build our website, create business cards, teach us how to “tweet,” figure out how to make labels, order us banners, design a sign, find us apparel, and massage our egos.  She’s done all of these rather well, although our self-esteem still needs a boost here and there.

Amanda grew up in Colorado, graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in Fine Arts, which serves her well in her quest to propel a growing graphic and web design business.  Feel free to hit her up for design services, unless you’re another brewery, in which case she has a strict non-compete agreement that stipulates some rather interesting penalties should she violate it.  We’re almost certain she’d prefer to work exclusively for us, rather than have to dye her hair hot pink and wear an olive green leotard for a year.

Amanda, affectionately known as “Nutz” at the tap room, recently completed a move to Eagle, along with her 450lb cat, Andre.  We can only hope she’ll continue designing Bonfire goodness well into the future, because otherwise, lots of our stuff will probably have stick figures on it.

Ken Hoeve, Ale Ambassador: Ken was sitting in the living room with us the day Bonfire Brewing was born and from that point forward, his excitement could not be contained.  Ken’s background is in marketing, but he’s also a father, a husband, a kayak fiend, a master of ceremonies, a weather man, a tour guide, a business owner, and a tornado of ideas.  He promotes the Bonfire goodness wherever he goes with a feverish enthusiasm that makes you want to hunt down our beer, capture it, and keep it all for yourself.  Opening a new business, especially one as capital intensive as a brewery, requires money — but it also requires drive, passion, and optimism.  With “Hobie” around, these ingredients are never in short supply.  He’s your best friend, your harshest critic, and your biggest supporter.  On any given night, you can sidle up next to him on the custom lift chair he built for us, and listen to one of hundreds of local anecdotes or stories.  He’ll probably also buy you a beer while simultaneously extolling the virtues of it, offering to make a beer named after you, and drawing up a new mural on the chalkboard wall.  We’re lucky to have him on board and can’t wait to hear what he thinks of next.  As long as he doesn’t call us in the middle of the night to tell us about it.

What began as an article announcing our grand opening, changed in the final hour to a story about pushing back the grand O to make a lot more beer.  We knew the beer was tasty, and that your distinguished palette would enjoy it…but we did not know you would consume it at the rate of 6 kegs per week.  Especially since we haven’t really told you how to get here, or provided a sign to guide you in.

We produced 15 kegs for the first run, thinking we could take a couple weeks off from brewing to finish up details at the tap room — decorating, painting, becoming more awesome at shuffleboard, etc.  Needless to say, 15 was not enough, so 15 more are on the way and slated to go on tap in 10 days or less.  After that, we’re brewing weekly in an attempt to satisfy the thirst of a populace that is clearly ready for its own brewery.  We’re floored by the support, and hope to repay it with the grandest of grand openings, sometime in January.  In the meantime, we’re still open, brewing, and serving up deliciousness.  We’re also still steadily improving at shuffleboard, so don’t get your hopes up on that.

“Ullr, sure-footed glory of the gods, on broad fields and in tangled woods we see your might…your loyal subjects in CO are throwing you a party in anticipation of the coming winter. Live music, pig-roast (we aren’t able to sacrifice a virgin at this time), bonfire and costumed fun for all.”

The organizer of this event to benefit the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) approached us about providing the libations back in early October.  At that point, we’d managed to navigate the various levels of government to obtain our license(s) to brew.  Having originally assumed that those processes would take 90 days or longer, rather than 62, we had neglected to finish a few small details with the brewing system.  Namely, how to keep the fermenting beer cold, how to transfer it into the cooler after fermentation, and how to carbonate it.  Like I said, small details.  Nevertheless, we offered up a tentative agreement to participate in what sounded like a certain winner of a festival.  Beer, gelunde quaffing, costumes, Hardscrabble, food, and praying for snow.  Difficult to go wrong.  In the meantime, the clock began ticking.  Needing at least 3 weeks to produce our first batch of quality, we knew brewing by mid-October was a necessity to fulfill our Snow God obligation.  Mid-October came and went though and the tanks remained empty.  Parts were on back order, heating elements were exploding, floor paint was drying, and hops were being shipped overnight.  On October 23rd, we simply decided to go for it with what we had on hand.  One boil kettle was only firing on 1 out of 3 elements, one of the mash tuns clogged continually, and one of us had a date with a hot chick.  Somehow though, beer was made, and made well. The second day, we did it again, and again we limped by in a crippled state.  By the third day, we were into the swing of things, and finished the afternoon with about 300 gallons of fermenting awesome.

What happened over the next 2-3 weeks is worthy of about 14 more blog entries for another time.  This one though, after all, is about ULLR.  ULLR wanted an IPA, but the IPA was not ready.  So, on the third day of shaking and hoping, ULLR was promised a brown ale.  The day before he needed it.  Because the Snow God is a generous type, he accepted the last minute hail Mary prayer with a wry smile.  The wind picked up, the costumes came out, and the beer flowed in ULLR themed glass steins.  Snuggled up next to the Demshitz Brown were delicious beers from Crazy Mountain and Gore Range Brewery.  PBR was the red-headed stepchild, hiding under the table for use in the gelunde quaffing — a glorious game of European origin in which teams of three compete to catch as many sliding beer mugs (and consume them, of course) as possible in mad dashes of 60 seconds each.  There were some teams that had practiced for months, and others, for minutes.  The Slippery Sistas.  The Bag Slappers.  The Snotcicle Extremes.  Team Astroglide.  All played with passion until the sun dipped and a champion (Astroglide) was crowned.  Hardscrabble managed to belt out blue grass goodness despite temperatures flirting with zero.  One by one, the kegs were kicked as the fire was stoked, and the revelers dwindled.  Tradition required an Eagle County Sheriff’s deputy to check in on the festivities, to ensure no children were sacrificed or liquor laws broken.  Having been satisfied as such, she departed without incident.  Horned, caped, mohawked, and snow-suited ULLR hopefuls remained to pay their parting respects and admire the ULLR-Fest trophy — a hearty metal and wood sculpture.  Reviews on the first keg of our first batch were overwhelmingly positive — with the highest compliment coming in the form of a pair of never-drink-beer Italians, eagerly gulping down pints of DSB.  A pat on the back from the 13 year brewmaster of GRB didn’t hurt either.

ULLR-fest is certain to become a valley tradition — and its inaugural effort has already produced tangible results — 3 feet of snow fell on Vail in the week following the event.  We are extraordinarily grateful to the event organizers for allowing us to participate, and we’re already on the path to developing an ULLR-exclusive beer.  Here’s to the Snow God.  Or Gods.  We like them all.  BB.