Gravity Box Brewing Company- Local people. Local beer.
Mauston, Wisconsin is finding that history truly can repeat itself, but in a good way. After over 100 years, the city again has its own brewery, the Gravity Box Brewing Company located downtown at 134 East State Street.
There is a history of brewing in the city dating back to the mid-1800’s and a German immigrant named Joseph Shorer. Mauston resident and author, Richard Rossin published a booklet, “The History of the Mauston Brewery 1858-1916”, after his interest had been peaked by the city’s brewing past. This led Rossin to wade through different archives putting together a chronology of brewing in Wisconsin, more specifically in the central and western parts of the state.
Gravity Box Brewing Company owners, Micah Playman and his wife April, did not just choose Mauston on a whim. Of course, there is a cool story behind how they wound up here.
While Micah was born and raised in Wisconsin Dells, April spent the majority of her life in Friendship, Wisconsin. After college, the Playmans lived in the Waukesha area for a number of years, then moved to Mauston in 2014. As a Nurse Anesthesiologist, his profession played a part in the move. “I took a job at the hospital here in town. So, we've been here a little over seven years. We have a lot of family still on both sides living between the Dells and Adams and Mauston areas. That was another reason to make the move back up here,” he said.
Eventually, Micah would take an interest in home brewing. When the Playmans moved back to the area, they found it harder to find some of the beer and atmospheres that they enjoyed living in a metropolitan area.
On a whim, Micah started home brewing, finding he could use his science background in the process. Science not only plays an important role in brewing, but as Micah put it, “There's as much of that in home brewing as you want there to be. You can completely neglect the science side and just do the touch, taste, feel, and just kind of feel your way through stuff, but as a science geek, I really dive into that sort of thing.”
Eventually, Micah explained brewing turned into a hobby gone haywire. The Playmans started thinking of taking their brewing to a higher level the year before COVID hit. “In early to mid-2019, that's kind of when we started kicking the idea seriously. We'd been talking about it for about a year up to that like, 'oh, wouldn't that be cool if you know, we had a brewery in Mauston, a brewery near where we lived?' We've been fans of the folks (Snapper and Kim Verbsky) over at the Hillsboro Brewing Company since we moved back here. When we first went down there, we said ‘like wow how cool- small town, small community, this great little facility, great old place in the neighborhood really attaches to it- wouldn't it be cool if we had something like that by us?’ Jokingly, over the years it's like we would say, 'well, nobody else is going to do it, we might as well give it a go.' So, we started kind of getting serious about it in the beginning of 2019 and then ultimately found this location. And we kind of stared at each other like, 'I think we could make this work.' And lo and behold, here we are.,” Micah said smiling.
Micah admits it’s a lot of fun making different beer and stressed that the brewery is not really married to a certain style of beer. He shared that so far, he has brewed only 12 of 30 recipes. “We've got a little bit more to get through of my kind of repertoire of what I know works. We'll be a place where there's always gonna be something different, new, or a variation.”
Teaming up with Collin Boudreau of Collin’s Coffees in New Lisbon, Wisconsin, to the Playmans was just good business in their minds. “It's not a very uncommon relationship for small taproom breweries like ours, to have something like a coffee shop. It's Wisconsin, you could serve beer at 7am and people would probably show up, but that's just not the vibe or the flavor that we're after. It was kind of foreign talking to folks who are not familiar with the craft beer scene or small independent craft breweries,” Micah shared.
To have something inside that would make the large open space of the Playman’s brewery usable for more than just a few hours of the day was, well, a must. Micah said, “I got to know Collin Boudreau just from being a customer of his. It was just one of those things like saying to Collin, 'hey, you ever wanted to be downtown Mauston? And he was like, yeah, that'd be great.'” The two talking back and forth, agreed building a taproom brewery with a coffee shop as a collective, creating an “inviting kind of coffee vibe-ish place to hang out and have a pint,” was a great mix. A place with more of a pub feeling than a bar atmosphere.
“We just wanted to be something completely unique. Granted, with starting a business, and the behind-the-scenes stuff, you don't realize how much work actually goes into that, but on paper it was like, this is a no brainer. Using some of his coffee roast for some of the coffee flavor stouts and porters that I brew also made sense. So, we brought him in and it's been everything we had hoped it would be and a little bit more,” Micah said.
Micah felt there would be a group of folks that would use Collin’s coffee shop in the mornings, and the local businesses downtown would appreciate having something that they can walk to and not have to get in the car and go down to Kwik Trip.
Building their commercial space was challenging Micah admitted. “We built this ourselves, that was kind of the goal from the get-go. Fortunately, I'm fairly handy, and can do a lot of little things. As we were drawing up our plan about how to do this, really the only way we could make this work is if we did a lion's share of the work. So, from gutting this, to laying the floor, to painting, really everything you see in here, we had a hand in it. It was just her (April) and I on weekdays, late nights and weekends after work.” April handles a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff with inventory, merchandising, and promoting their business. “April is behind the beer yoga on Sundays. That was her design on getting that started which turned out to be hugely popular- like who would have thought.”
Having no desire to have a restaurant or food in the brewery side, Micah said they are sticking to what they know best, brewing. “As we started going, it made sense for a coffee shop to have some pastries and breakfast things and a couple of grab-and-gos, but you know, we reached out to the other businesses that are here, and let them know we have no intention of having food. We're gonna farm that out to either carry in, delivery, lining up some food trucks that are local, and do that sort of thing. And if you want to bring a picnic basket, bring a picnic basket. I have no problem with that, that's just kind of what the whole vibe is here, just very community centric and community forward. Like I said, we're not trying to take away, we're just trying to add and ultimately bring more people downtown. Foot traffic is good for everybody.”
The Gravity Box also features entertainment as an additional draw. Micah shared, “Interestingly, one of the musicians who's playing here is the daughter of somebody I went to high school with, who still resides in the Dells. We have reached out to local bands between Mauston, Reedsburg, Dells, Baraboo, and Tomah. I drew a circle 30 miles around on the map (with Mauston as the center) and that's kind of where we want to pull from. I was the same way during construction. We used all local trades, all local businesses, downtown at the paint store, across the street design center, to the flooring center. I mean we didn't do big box stores. We also used a local electrician, farmers, and HVAC company. Why would I save a few bucks trying to go to a big box store and get cookie cutter stuff? We want the guy that's from here who's going to spend his money in this town, it was never an option to not do that.”
Looking forward, Micah and April hope that they can at the very least sustain their business. Never intending to get “rich and famous”, it is more utilitarian to the Playmans. They just want the wheel to spin and hopefully show other people that might be tossing the idea around of opening a candy store, restaurant, or sandwich shop, it is possible.
Sharing his final thoughts Micah said, “There are still a couple of projects that we have to work on that will enhance people's experience here with some indoor and outdoor areas. We have a pretty grand idea for something in the next couple of years, that if we were fortunate enough to still be in business, we might be able to encounter that would drastically change kind of the landscape of downtown. We hope to establish a family friendly place. Even though we do serve alcohol, we also have house-made sodas. I like the fact that you can bring your family down, mom and dad can enjoy a beer, the kids can have a soda or they can have a coffee and, you know, not necessarily be in a bar. Lending a helping hand in revitalizing downtown Mauston and making more of downtown open is important. I think we have all the ingredients here for a really special kind of downtown, a small town, you know, a USA kind of thing.”
Visit Gravity Box Brewing Company and Collin’s Coffees on Facebook.
