My first trip to Colorado was a birthday gift to myself, booked spontaneously in the middle of the night with only a passing thought about accommodations and where I would sleep for the few days I was there. I had one main goal 

 While visiting,  which will be saved for a different blog, but because of my hasty planning, I ended up in a ‘boutique’ hotel in my friend’s neighborhood, which was objectively nice, but not quite my usual haunt while I travel. This was also the reason why I did not have any coffee or equipment with me as well, booking last minute budget air without extra luggage space and bags stuffed last minute without much planning or my usually lightweight plastic aeropress. 

I love taking an aeropress with me when I travel for emergency situations where I am stranded too far from access to a cup of coffee. It sounds a little crazy, but after almost a decade in the coffee industry, though my caffeine dependence is not as bad as it was but still definitely a thing and a caffeine headache is not something I want to deal with when I’m on vacation. 

I had known that much of the surrounding areas, neighborhoods and towns around Denver were not typically known to be the most pedestrian friendly, but something about this area’s isolation in this barren concrete grid of highways took me back a little. 

The drive there from the airport was only about 50 minutes but I watched as the landscape never gave way to sidewalks and guard rails hugged us close from either side. Many ramps branched off with the beating veins of Denver’s commuters and once the cheerful musician I rode with, who moonlighted as a rideshare driver found ours, we slid off the main artery of the interstate and soon spotted some thin snaking paths that looked walkable in between the great intersections that hugged strip malls and lines of widely spaced pathetic looking young trees.

My driver informed me that yes, you could walk to some places here, but should you, is an entirely different matter.

Once I had arrived in my friend’s neighborhood I discovered it was one of those that were very nice but one of copy paste glass and steel tower clusters filled with cookie cutter apartments and bougie retail bottoms to, in theory, allow the residents to never have to leave their community. These types of places, usually half empty, and the other half home to young professional tech transplants, typically were fairly barren when it came to community, without much color or apparent activity going on in the ‘third space’ areas of it, the lonely empty lawn chairs and cold marble fountain sitting unused and not particularly very welcoming.

There is one saving grace to these sorts of neighborhoods – They usually have some sort of third wave coffeeshop. 

And this was how I found myself in the lobby of Sweet Bloom Coffee, patiently waiting in line, looking down at the teacup mini aussie whatever also standing in line ahead of me, looking back with one, maybe two, of its bulging ice blue eyes, almost every single morning that I was in Denver. 

Every visit I walked away both hands full, one mocha didn’t seem to be enough, the foam perfectly steamed, and the espresso flawlessly balanced. 

Sweet Bloom began long ago around 2013, the creation of Andy Sprenger, a nature conservationist turned US Brewers Cup titleist & Aeropress champion. With the addition of Eric Yochim, founder of Two Rivers Coffee, to the team as a partner in 2019, Sweet Bloom Coffee has grown to multiple locations across Denver, offering a wide array of delicious coffees, a wide array of pastries, incredibly helpful and friendly staff to serve you and even host community events and classes in their larger facilities. 

In the land of incredible craft beer, I found myself with a hangover from hell every single morning I was in Denver and the staff of the Sweet Bloom in Westminster will never know how grateful I was for their delicious coffee and their incredible pastry recommendations when I was simply too tired to even make a decision. I can still taste the sweetness of the orange scone the sweet Asian barista encouraged me to try one morning. 

If you ever find yourself in Denver, make sure to swing by for a cup of perfectly roasted coffee and be sure to check out their calendar for all the neat events they host!