ALCHEMY ATLAS DISC

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DENVER-BASED ALCHEMY Bicycles is known for its cus-tom carbon, steel, and titanium frames, but also offers produc-tion frames that you can deck out with your choice of paint—a program it calls “semi-custom.” (The upcharge starts at $300 for the stock colors and higher for a fully custom paint job.) The bikes also come in a wide vari-ety of builds. It’s the best of both worlds: You get the details and quality of a small-batch, hand-built bike without the higher price and typical two- to three-month (or longer) wait for a custom bike.

The Atlas, a semi-custom option, is Alchemy’s stock carbon race bike. I tested a frameset, built with a nearly identical group to the $8,500 Ultegra Di2 complete bike—only the Enve aero SES handlebar and 28mm Continental tires are different. Mavic’s excel-lent SpeedRelease thru-axles hold the wheels to the frame and Enve fork for fast wheel swaps.

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Even though it’s a production bike, the Atlas is still painstakingly handmade with rounded tubes and a classic silhouette in Alchemy’s Colorado factory. Its geometry and layup make for a ride that met my high expectations for the brand. The bike is fast, nimble, and intui-tive. It blends the precision needed for fast road racing with a weight that’s compatible with soaring up mountains. It’s supple when I want it to be, and it’s never mushy or loose when I whip it up for sprints. You can really throttle it, yet it won’t beat the shit out of you on crappy pavement. It’s capable on almost all terrain (it was a little squirrely on singletrack, but, hey, it’s a road bike). And it moves so seamlessly between adventuring all day on light dirt roads, belting out training miles, and hammering at race pace, it’s almost like having multiple bikes.