Cocoon Brewing Company open now in Ledgeview
By Janelle Fisher
City Pages Editor
Just two months ago, a new brewery opened its doors at 2233 Kaftan Way in Ledgeview, owned and operated by brothers Matt Walters and his brother Mike.
Walters said his interest in brewing beer actually began several years before the idea of opening a brewery came to him and his brother.
“I was kind of a homebrewer for five or six years and I got more and more serious about it as time went by and talked to my brother and ended up with the idea of starting up a brewery together,” he said. “It’s just been a process of building on the ideas and coming up with a concept and finding the land and building and construction and all of the stuff that Covid threw at us in the middle of all that.”
Despite the long process, Walters said the brewery dream became a reality.
“We made it through, I guess,” he said, “And now we have a 10-barrel brewing system and brick-fired pizza. We serve pizza and beer and we’re on four acres in Ledgeview.”
When it came to naming their new brewery, Walters said he and his brother turned to a personal experience which has now shaped their whole brand.
“My brother and I used to collect butterflies when we were seven, eight, nine, ten growing up on the lakes around northern Wisconsin,” he said. “It was just kind of hard to come up with a name in general when 10,000 breweries already have a lot of names taken, so we just drew on something personal and built it from there. It really personifies our brand pretty well at this point.”
Sticking with the butterfly theme, Walters said Cocoon Brewing’s beers will likely have butterfly-themed names — although that may be easier said than done as time goes on.
“We’re trying to, as much as possible,” he said. “It might get a little tricky as we go on if we continue to every time come up with a good idea… We actually have a Mexican lager coming out that we’re actually going to name after a geographical region in Mexico where the Monarch butterflies go over the winter and hang out, so we’ll be able to pull some other loosely associated butterfly names into that. It’ll get trickier but I think that is something we try to plan and we’ll do a little education piece or a natural conservancy-type spin on some things, I’m sure.”
One unique feature of Cocoon Brewing are the small cabins on the property — called cocoons to stick with the butterfly branding — which groups can reserve to hang out in.
“We have four of these outdoor little cabins, basically, that are just off the main taproom space,” Walters said. “They are reservable for small groups and they’re heated and cooled and have tvs and sound systems and are a place for smaller groups to hang out semi-privately.”
The cocoons, Walters said, are a Wisconsin adaptation of something he and his brother saw at a brewery in Minnesota.
“Before Covid, we were at a brewery in Minneapolis that had set up a place for people to do saunas at the back of their grounds and people were coming in and doing saunas, and we were like ‘that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,’” he said. “Originally, we were thinking about doing that sort of thing and then we thought that might be a little too far out there for our community, so we transitioned to sort of the stereotypical northern Wisconsin cabin-style idea and just have like little cabins for people to hang out. If they couldn’t go up to their cabins on the weekend or didn’t have one or whatever, they could come to our spots and still hang out with a small group of friends and have a pretty nice experience.”
In addition to the cocoons and indoor brewery space, Walters said there is plenty of room at Cocoon Brewing for outdoor games, activities and eventually live performances.
“We have almost four acres, so we have kind of a designated area for a more yard game-type situation and then a little more open area between the cocoons with a stage space at the far end,” he said. “We already have booked a few live music acts for the summer and we’re working with the town to approve what we would like to do for a stage-type area. So we really just have a kind of wide open space for people and families to spread out and enjoy what we can of the nice weather when it finally arrives.”
More information about Cocoon Brewing Company can be found at cocoonbrewing.com.