Upper Peninsula's microbrewing community has expanded into Ishpeming.
Cognition Brewing Company will be located at 112 and 114 S. Main St. in downtown Ishpeming, with the tap room in the old Giving Tree storefront. Plans include a seven-barrel brewery to create a wide range of different brews stemming from local products.
"We want to create beers that are bold and unique, that will inspire conversations. Beer has way more to offer than the light fizzy yellow stuff that somehow took over (the) beer industry," says Master Brewer Brian Richards on
the Cognition Brewery blog.
Richards is part of a three-man group creating the microbrewery, which includes Dan Perkins and Jay Clancey, both of the greater Ishpeming area. Richards has been brewing beers for 13 years and currently works at Blackrocks Brewery in Marquette, while Clancey is an active amateur-brew aficionado.
"For (Clancey), his dream vacation would be to go to these great brewing communities and just sample beer all day," Perkins said. "When we met up and tasted what (Richards) had to offer, we truly believed in him and his talents and got this started."
Cognition will use aspects of the steampunk aesthetic--a sci-fi/fantasy subgenre based on elaborate steam-powered machines of the 19th century--to decorate the bar, setting up the company to be nicknamed "the cog." However, the play on words also represents more than the cogs and machinery of the bar, but also of Ishpeming.
Perkins has been redeveloping properties in Ishpeming's downtown, attempting to rejuvenate the area through local businesses. Already owning a construction company and a food outlet that his wife operates, Perkins owns five total downtown properties, including the future home of Cognition Brewing Company. He hopes the microbrewery will be the piece that helps continue Ishpeming's downtown infrastructure.
"The town has been doing great work with renovating the streets and sewers and creating community opportunities is a must," Perkins says. "To take a place that was down in the dumps a short ways ago and to turn it around like this is a recipe to turn around a town."
The estimated June 1, 2014 opening date is almost a year away, but the three are working on renovations and financial stability for the brewery. Perkins and Clancey both invested $50,000 of their own money, pairing it with grants from state and local governments for the estimated $500,000 needed to open the business. The group has created a couple of different business models and started renovating the Main Street facilities, according to Perkins. They are happy with the strides taken so far.
"It has been a lot of work so far, but Cognition Brewing will be a world class microbrewery," Perkins says.
Brice Burge is the editor of Marquette Social Scene and a freelance journalist.
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