By James Feichtner

While Sun King Brewing Co.’s enormous Fishers brewery has been delayed till 2018, the city will be getting a taste of what the beer makers have to offer thanks to their newly opened Sun King Taproom and small batch brewery.

“We want people to come in and have an opportunity to try our various, different beers and get a little bit more of a sense of what Sun King is all about so that it’s not just another beer on the shelf,” said Clay Robinson, Sun King co-founder.

On July 1, the Indianapolis based brewery opened their newest edition of their brand at 7848 E. 96th St. Using this new location, the brewery looks to expand its reaches to it’s fans in the Hamilton County area who may have not experienced their main facility in downtown Indianapolis.

“When we initially decided to come to Fishers we chose the area because we wanted to have access to a large number of people who live in the area and might enjoy craft beer,” Robinson said. “Of our retail accounts, Hamilton County is our number two sales market. So there are a lot of people up here who already love our beer. We consistently go to events or are out and about and talk to people who live up here and say they have never been to our brewery downtown, so it gives us much better access.”

While the taproom serves as a closer approach for Hamilton County residents to access Sun King beer fresh from the tap, it also allows the brewery to expand its beer crafting capabilities in its small batch brewery on-site.

“This system is about 10 percent the size of downtown, which will allow us to have a dedicated system and that will allow us to design new and interesting beers, work with more local ingredients, play around and do styles of beers that we’ve been unable to do in the past and continue our creativity,” said Robinson. “So we can do a small batch, decide whether we like it or not; we can make some tweaks and then scale it up a little bit more and if we like it and it sells well, then we can do it on our larger system.”

The 6400-square-foot taproom features multiple taps, three brewing tanks, picnic table and bar style seating, multiple televisions and a private room that eventually can be reserved for larger groups.

“We’ve got a private room that holds up to 60 people,” said Robinson. “We can do community events with some of our various community partners, fundraisers, things like that.”

The taproom will also feature menus from nearby restaurants that guests can order to the taproom.

“We’ve got menus from Sahm’s and Tijuana Flats,” said Robinson. “We’ll have a list of restaurants that are nearby that are willing to deliver food in.”