When we founded Fulton in 2009, we were homebrewing out of a South Minneapolis garage and contract brewing at a small Wisconsin brewery. Our dream was to build a real Minneapolis brewery of our own in the next 5-10 years, and quit our day jobs along the way. We never guessed we’d build two Minneapolis breweries in three years. Looks like being wrong can sometimes be awesome.

LIKE MOST GREAT THINGS, IT STARTED IN A GARAGE

In 2006, we began homebrewing 10 gallons at a time in a one-car garage in South Minneapolis. We had no intentions of starting a business, but later found out we had accidentally put together a startup’s dream team. Jim had the big ideas, Peter built the equipment, Ryan dreamed up recipes and Brian drank the beer. Before we knew it, we were moving from our beloved one-car garage to a two-car garage. What an upgrade! Little did we know, this wouldn’t be our last expansion.

By 2009, we were getting pretty good at homebrewing, and our family & friends seemed to love our beer (though, for them it was free. So, maybe they weren’t the most unbiased focus group.) We had a few solid recipes we all loved. One was an IPA we called Sweet Child of Vine. Another was a subtle but complex blonde ale we named The Lonely Blonde.

We had the beers, but we were far from the ideal position to start a company. Ryan was in the middle of graduate school, Brian was getting ready to get married, Jim was studying for the bar exam, and Peter was expecting his first child. None of us had any money to put towards a brewery, nor had any of us run a business before. We had no industry ties or experience. But we had passion, so we decided to forge ahead anyway.

We started calling local breweries to see if they could spare any brewing space. There weren’t many Minnesota breweries at the time, and none of them had excess capacity; but, then we came across Sand Creek Brewing Company in Wisconsin. Sand Creek had the capacity for contracting and—crucially—allowed us to do the brewing. We were able to apprentice with an experienced brewmaster, learn the basics of operating a production plant, build distribution, and generate some revenue. We sold our first pint of Sweet Child of Vine on October 28, 2009.

THE HOUSE THAT BEER BUILT

Things happened fast. Less than a year later, we had beer in over 100 bars in the Twin Cities, and signed a lease for a brewery of our own in downtown Minneapolis. As we were drawing our layout and waiting for equipment to arrive, Minnesota passed a key piece of legislation enabling packaging breweries to operate taprooms. We quickly redrew our plans and ordered bar equipment. We started brewing and selling growlers in the fall of 2011, and by the following March, we opened Minneapolis’ first taproom.

The downtown brewery was full before we knew it. The taproom took up half the building, we were brewing around the clock on our 20-barrel brewhouse, and we simply couldn’t keep up with the demand of the Twin Cities market. By January of 2013, the four of us decided we needed to build another brewery.

THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING BIGGER

On September 1st, 2013 – three years to the day after we entered our first lease for the downtown brewery—we got the keys to a 51,000-square-foot building in NE Minneapolis. The NE brewery has 8x the square footage of our downtown location, and we get to brew on an 80-barrel brewhouse. The NE brewery does not have a taproom; but our offices, warehousing, and QC/QA laboratory are all located there. Today, the vast majority of Fulton beer – in kegs, bottles, and cans – comes from the NE brewery. But we never forgot about our OG location! In addition to housing our taproom, the downtown location has evolved into our laboratory for smaller batch and experimental brewing, including collaborations, taproom exclusives, and barrel aging.

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