Fulton Beer - Hop Kingdom American IPA

In the glass, this classic American IPA delivers a bright golden hue with a light copper tinge, great clarity, and plenty of pale fluffy foam. Look for bright citric notes with floral tones, backed by touches of tropical and stone fruits – all overlaid over a very light, mildly toasted malty note. In the flavor, the hops come through with a good dose of fruitiness which manifests very zesty on the palate, like grapefruit and orange peel. To us, the perceived bitterness comes through quite firm, a bit higher than the stated 35 IBUs thanks to a clean and dry malt core offering just the lightest touch of toastiness. If you couldn’t guess from the walleye on the can, Fulton crafted this quenching beer to be the perfect IPA for outdoor adventures, specifically fishing in the land of 10,000 lakes. So, for pairing options, we’re thinking pan-seared walleye with a lemon-caper sauce sounds pretty dynamite. But, any zesty citric dish should pair nicely, especially with a little bit of butter or oil for those zesty hops to cut through. Cheers!

The story of Fulton Beer begins in 2006 with the four folks behind the business—Ryan Petz, Brian Hoffman, Peter Grande, and Jim Diley—starting to homebrew together in Jim’s piddly (and cold) one-car garage. Rest assured, Minnesota gets cold. But that homebrewing inlet, like so many unexpected and fiscally questionable paths into professional brewing, led them in 2009 to start Fulton Beer together. As the story goes: Ryan and Jim were in debt from grad school, Pete and his wife were expecting, everyone else was newly or about to get married... The four had no savings, no cache of brewing connections, and no real industry experience. The circumstances, in other words, were perfect.

In the time since, we’ve been able to watch Fulton Beer grow from a small, contracting brewery into something much more established—and all in spite of the less-than-super-great chances for the whole endeavor. The first keg of Fulton Beer was served at The Happy Gnome out in St. Paul; this was back in late October of 2009. The intrepid four signed a lease for their first brewery in September 2010, which became the first brewery taproom in the Twin Cities. And, having quickly exhausted that production space, they began building a second brewery in late 2013.

Today, the majority of Fulton Beer’s production takes place at their second location: a 51,000-square-foot facility in northeast Minneapolis, about five minutes from their original spot. Today, they brew several year-round brews in addition to a wide array of limited, barrel-aged beers, and sour mixed culture beers, plus a line of increasingly popular hard seltzers. To learn more, visit www.fultonbeer.com.