Sun King plans small brewery, tap room in Fishers

Sun King Brewing Co. plans to open a tap room and small-batch brewery in Fishers in June, the Indianapolis-based company announced Wednesday morning.

The 6,000-square-foot facility in the North by Northeast Shopping Center at 7848 E. 96th St., will not interfere with Sun King’s proposal to open a much larger $8.8 million brewery and event center about a half-mile away, company spokeswoman Beth Belange said.

The larger facility is on hold while Indiana lawmakers debate a law that would allow smaller beer makers like Sun King to produce more barrels of their product.

Senate Bill 297, which changes the maximum number of barrels that a small brewery can produce in a calendar year from 30,000 to 90,000 barrels, was passed unanimously by the House Public Policy Committee late last month and is awaiting a vote by the full House.

Sun King nearly hit the 30,000-barrel production cap last year and wouldn’t be able to open the larger brewery without the higher limits.

Work on the smaller Fishers facility has already started, Sun King said. Called the Sun King Tap Room and Small-batch Brewery, the space will feature a three-barrel brewing system that is expected to produce about 1,500 barrels per year initially and up to 2,000 in the longer term. An event space will be available for community and private events.

"This new brewery will also give us the opportunity to produce more small batch, one-off and experimental beers than we can in our full-production facility in downtown Indianapolis," Sun King co-founder Clay Robinson said in a written statement.

The tap room will remain in operation even if the bigger Fishers facility is eventually built, Belange said.

The larger 40,000-square-foot facility is slated for an undeveloped 12.8-acre parcel at the southeast corner of Kincaid Drive and Park Central Drive. The facility could boost Sun King’s production by more than 20,000 barrels annually.