Kyle Nabilcy
I’m not going to waste words here. The Funk Factory Taproom is finally about to open to the public. There’s no guarantee it won’t be busy; it probably will be. Beers will come and go. But there’s something to be said for being able to order a Funk Factory beer without having to clear a day on your calendar to pick it up.
Proprietor Levi Funk put the taproom through a trial run this last weekend, with taps flowing for the first time since he started renovating the Gilson Street building in the fall of 2014. It has seen a handful of one-shot parties for Madison Craft Beer Week and Great Taste Eve, and it’s kind of hard to believe that Funk has been working on the space since before the first batch of Door Kriek came out.
Let’s say you’re not a big fan of frantic bottle release pre-orders, and as a result have little to no idea what I’m going on about. Here’s what you need to know.
Funk Factory doesn’t brew beer. It sources wort — if beer is liquid bread, wort is the batter — from a number of breweries in Wisconsin and the Midwest. The wort is allowed to spontaneously ferment in Funk Factory’s coolship, a big metal bathtub with a long history in European brewing. The fermenting beer, typically on its way to becoming sour, is racked into barrels to age and develop. Sometimes fruit goes in, sometimes not.
The process is long (think years), the attention to detail great, and now you should see why the Funk Factory taproom didn’t open until two and a half years after Levi Funk acquired the space. He literally needed all that time to make the beer he’d be serving.
Well, some of the beer. The de facto house beer at the taproom is Funk’s latest project, called Meerts. Unlike Funk’s more complicated fruited lambic-style beers, Meerts is young, having been brewed in February. It’s a low-alcohol style, traditionally created by re-using the mash from a lambic brew. Funk maintains a very open blog on his website, and goes into great detail on the projects he tackles.
For its grand opening, June 23-25, regular unfruited Meerts will be on tap, as well as a spectacular version with cherries and another with either peaches or apricots. Funk’s strategy is to offer what’s good, and only when it’s ready, which means a certain amount of inscrutability when trying to find out what’s going to be tapped.
There will also be guest taps, including some beers from Funk’s Untitled Art label with Octopi Brewing. (Octopi brewed the wort that became this current batch of Meerts.) Funk also anticipates tapping a cranberry sour called Blood, Sweat, and Unicorn Tears, as well as a wine/beer hybrid he calls Cervino. There should even be a Funk Factory IPA, which is kind of like Hermes making a stocking cap with a poof on top — comfortable and beautiful, yes, but also what?
Watching Funk Factory grow from its very homespun roots to where it is now, an official taproom, is unquestionably exciting. It’s good for the Madison beer scene, and it’s good for the south end of the Bay Creek neighborhood, which could use some commercial activity beyond the South Park Arby’s. Though to be fair, Levi Funk has assured me the Mexican food at Naty’s Fast Food, just around the corner from the taproom, is pretty great. Now I’ve got something close by to wash it down with.
The taproom’s grand opening kicks off at 4 p.m. on June 23. After the initial weekend, it will be open Thursdays through Sundays. And June 20 at noon, the first bottles of Meerts go up for pre-sale on Brown Paper Tickets. It’s the first Funk Factory release for which bottles can be picked up at the taproom.
Funk Factory Taproom
1602 Gilson St., Madison
Thursday 3-10 p.m.
Friday 3 p.m.-midnight
Saturday 11 a.m.-midnight
Sunday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
