A long time brewing – Northwoods brewery opens its doors

Rich Palzewic

Staff

March 2, 2026

BOULDER JUNCTION – After a nearly six-year journey, Boulder Jct. Brewing Company has officially opened – offering residents and visitors of the Northwoods community six beers on tap.

Owners and married couple Ian Brown and Tracy Converse said the brewery, which opened at the end of January, faced plenty of twists and turns along the way – but it was all worth it.

“Things have been going fantastic,” Brown said. “As an example, recently, my bar was full at 4 p.m., and I had people from Sayner, Tomahawk, Conover, Arbor Vitae, Land O’Lakes, Rhinelander and Sun Prairie. We’ve become a big draw.”

As a tourist destination renowned for outdoor recreation, Brown said Boulder Junction – which has a population of less than 1,000 people – does an excellent job of drawing visitors to town for a variety of events.

“The snowmobile trails were absolutely stellar this year after a couple of really bad years,” she said. “We had way more snowmobile traffic than I anticipated. In the summertime, we’ve got biking and other outdoor recreation opportunities.”

And it’s not just tourists who are stopping by – Brown said many locals are quickly becoming regulars, too.

“If you build it, they will come,” he laughed. “If you build an inviting space with really good views, people will definitely come.”

With the “mud months” approaching, Brown said the brewery is preparing by planning events and other attractions to draw people in.

“We’re working with other businesses to collaborate and give people a reason to get together,” he said. 

Starting with five beers on tap, Converse said the brewery soon expanded its lineup to six, with all recipes created by the head brewer, her. 

“There will definitely be more beers,” she said. “We’re going into the slow time of the year, but by May or summertime, we’ll hopefully have all 12 taps full. I also collaborate with a few other breweries, so we might have other options besides what I brew here.”

Not involved in the beer-making process, Brown said, “I focus on other things.”

“I work on the names of the beers and also get to clean up spent grain on brew days and haul it to whatever organization gets it that week,” he said. “We have a list of about 12 or 13 organizations and individuals that have asked for it.”

Brown said he did try brewing beer once, but it didn’t turn out too well.

“I stopped going down that path,” he laughed. “When I met Tracy, I knew she was an extremely capable brewer. I let her handle that side of the business.”

According to boulderjctbrewingco.com, Converse is a certified Cicerone Level One and an active member of the Pink Boots Society, which highlights her commitment to excellence in the beer industry.

The website further states that she holds a certificate from the Siebel Institute of Technology’s World Beer Academy Intermediate Concise Course in Brewing Technology, demonstrating her advanced knowledge of brewing.

From the East Coast to Boulder Junction

Brown, who also serves as the brewery’s director of operations, said the story of how he and Tracy relocated to Boulder Junction is a story in and of itself.

He said they had lived on the East Coast for the majority of their adult lives before moving to North Central Wisconsin. 

While living out east, Brown said some mutual friends of theirs opened a small brewery.

“Tracy and I didn’t even know each other at the time,” he said. “Tracy had been home brewing for quite some time before that, but then joined our friends at the brewery.”

Brown said their shared passion for craft beer played a key role in bringing him and Converse together.

“I love craft beer, so I joined the mug club there and met Tracy in 2016,” he said. “I had been in IT for almost 30 years, while Tracy was in cloud sales for quite a few years. Neither of us wanted to do that forever, and we wanted a change of pace. That’s when we started talking about opening our own place.”

Brown said their brewing journey began in Washington, D.C., where Tracy began developing her brewing skills.

Discussions about opening their own brewery, he said, became serious around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

However, Brown said they realized that pursuing their dream in D.C. wasn’t practical and looked elsewhere to make it happen.

“We knew we couldn’t do it in the D.C. area and quit our day jobs – it’s too expensive to run this type of community-based business model and not have a full-time day job,” he said. “Everyone at the brewery where we worked, owners included, had regular nine-to-five day jobs and would brew in the evenings and be open on the weekends.”

Brown said that’s when the small Northwoods town in Vilas County, Boulder Junction, came into play.

“We started thinking about where we would want to do this,” he said. “Neither of us really wanted to move back to our hometowns, and I had been coming to the Northwoods – I grew up in Peoria, Illinois – since I was two. I even went to Camp Manito-wish growing up. No matter where I’ve lived in this country, the Boulder Junction area has always been what I consider my home base.”

Brown said he and Tracy were drawn to the pedestrian-friendly nature of the town.

“We also liked the nature of the community – how supportive they are of local businesses,” he said. “There’s not a single franchise or chain here in Boulder Junction. It seemed like Main Street, Boulder Junction, was the right place for us to do this. So far, it’s turning out to be a true story.”

Brown said they closed on the building at 10351 Main St. in June 2022, and that’s when “we publicly announced our intention to really do this.”

“We really wanted a property right on Main Street and felt that was important for visibility, street traffic and being part of the Main Street scene in downtown Boulder Junction…,” he said. “We moved to Boulder Junction about a year later, in July 2023.”

The real work begins

Brown said after closing on the property and moving to the area, that’s when the real work began.

“We had to completely demolish the building on site,” he said.

Brown said the owners of the former building – known as the Blueberry Patch – wanted to sell and were ready to retire.

“It’s in a perfect location,” he said. “We fully intended on modifying that building to turn it into the brewery, but our architect and general contractor got in there and realized the building, which was built in the 1950s and added on to in the 1960s, was so far out of code that it would be virtually impossible to retrofit it and make it work.”

At that point, Brown said they decided it was better to demolish the building and start from scratch.

“We got to design it from the ground up, which ended up being for the best because we were able to then craft the space to our needs, particularly the industrial part of the brewing area, which has all our tanks and floor drains,” he said.

Though they weren’t able to use the building itself, Brown said they salvaged “a ton of wood and materials from it.”

“We used the materials in the tap room,” he said. “The tap room part of the building is shaped very similarly to what was there before. The architecture firm we worked with was fantastic at bringing the spirit and the DNA of the old building while upgrading it and creating a warm new space.”

After the old building was demolished in October 2023, Brown said they laid the foundation for the new brewery but had to pause construction while they applied for permits for their wastewater treatment system.

“Because we’re on a septic system and well on a small plot of land, we invested in a fairly new technology called a membrane bioreactor and an on-site wastewater treatment system,” he said.

Because the technology is newer and the state had never seen it on this small a scale, Brown said it took a little extra time.

“It was pretty new to [the crew], so it took them a little extra work to understand what we were doing,” he said. “We actually hired a second engineering firm that specializes in permitting and compliance to help walk them through it, because it wasn’t on their checklist. The DNR and DSPS (Department of Safety and Professional Services) run on familiarity and standardized stuff, so when you bring something in that’s not standard, it’s going to take longer to get through.”

Brown said that process took about six months to work through.

“That was just about the time we received approval for our SBA loan, so then we began construction in spring 2024,” he said. “We worked hard through the summer, [though] by the time winter rolled around, we still didn’t have a roof on the place.”

Brown said that winter, they spent a lot of time snowblowing out the tap room as their general contractor and subcontractors “did an incredible job working through some really tough conditions.”

“I really can’t say enough about the team that worked on this building and brought it to life – and with a very high level of quality,” he said.

Due to the complexity of the septic and wastewater treatment systems, Brown said progress on the brewery wasn’t always visible to the public.

“A lot of time was spent making sure all of that was right,” he said. “Just because we weren’t building vertically for a period of time, that didn’t mean stuff wasn’t happening.”

Once the concrete was laid – which took a bit longer than expected because “the concrete company we went with is in high demand because they’re the best” – Brown said “things really started happening.”

“We finally started getting walls and trusses up,” he said. “We pretty much wrapped up construction by June [of last year], and then it was a matter of getting the brewing system fired up. We also built a lot of the furniture ourselves, so that took some time.”

With the hard work finally paying off, Brown said Boulder Jct. Brewing Company is open from 3-9 p.m. Monday and Thursday, noon to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.

“For now, during the slower months, we are closed on Tuesday and Wednesday to clean and brew beer,” he said. “Come May, we will re-evaluate and make some decisions about summer hours.”

For more information, check out Boulder Jct. Brewing Company’s website or Facebook page.