To celebrate Traverse City Beer Week, MyNorth will be running a daily interview with brewers and pub owners in the Northern Michigan microbrew scene. Today we check in with the Co-Owner of 7 Monks in Traverse City, Matt Cozzens.


Can you tell us a little about 7 monks? What’s the thought behind it?

We have 46 different taps in the taproom and we rotate those daily. We place a pretty big emphasis on Michigan and we host different charity events and a lot of different taps. We have a limited gastropub menu with local food and we like to highlight different brewers.

What are you bringing to the local beer scene?

We appreciate and love promoting local beer. We have a lot of Stormcloud and Terra Firma and when we offer it here and people ask where that brewery is and we get to direct them, that’s nice. A lot of hard work is being done in the brewery and we like to acknowledge that. We put the best beers up on the tap wall and we make it diversified. We have a beer for anybody. Lots of people get overwhelmed when they come in, but all we need is a little information from you and then we are going to find the perfect beer for you.

How do you think the local beer scene is here compared to other small towns? Do you think Traverse City is unusual?

I do think it’s unusual and I am not surprised about how well it’s doing in Traverse City. There are a lot of brewers up here and there is the farm to table movement that has been going on up here for the last decade. What the restaurants have done and what the wineries have done is pretty incredible. The geography here lends to craft products and it’s getting competitive, but it just means the beer has to be good to be successful.

What are you most excited about for beer week?

There’s a lot of brewery personnel that are coming to town and brewers that are downstate might be coming  to Traverse City for the first time and that’s great. We are doing six different events including the Short’s Bar Crawl. On Monday it’s Michigan Beer night. Tuesday we are having Brewery Vivant come and they have aged beer in a Left Foot Charley red wine barrel. We are calling it “Wood Aged” night. On Wednesday we are having an event with Jolly Pumpkin and 12% Imports and they have some rare offerings. On Thursday we are having a Founders Brewing night and then we wind up the week on Friday with a Short’s event called “12 Tap Taco Takeover.” We’re going to have all sorts of different taco’s including a Thanksgiving taco. We are trying to have fun with what we are doing and with all the variety that Short’s has to offer it’s fun to pair.

To learn more about 7 Monks check out their website.


More Northern Michigan Beer:

Northern Michigan Microbrew Interviews: Joe Short, Short’s Brewing

Traverse City Beer Week

Northern Michigan Microbrew Interviews: Jeff Brooks, Bravo Zulu