Kings Court Brewing is located in a historic building on Cannon Street in Poughkeepsie, NY. The building was formerly home to King's Court Hotel in the mid-1900s, a place where many Bardavon performers would stay. In the early 1970s it was turned into King's Court Apartments and in 2013 the site was redeveloped and currently has apartments, a grand lobby, and commercial spaces, one of which is Kings Court Brewing.
Cortlandt, the head brewer, has won several awards from the Great American Beer Festival and a California State Fair and has been making a diverse, unique selection for the brewery since 2018.
We sat down to speak with co-owner, Caroline Bergelin, who also does the graphic design and helms the sales department for Kings Court. Caroline is also married to Cortlandt, making Kings Court a local, family-run business right here in Dutchess County.
-How did the idea for opening King's Court come to you and Cortlandt?
Cortlandt has over 10 years of craft brewing experience in other breweries in the Bay Area of California. He also received his Masters in Brewery from UC-Davis. I have a graduate design degree and 7 years of experience working in an engineering design field. With our combined skills we decided we would try out running our own brewery, so we loved the idea of working for ourselves. From brewing, website creation, can artwork, social media, brewery construction, etc, we have done it all ourselves.-
With a brewing background on the west coast, what made you choose the Hudson Valley to open your own space?
We are originally from the East Coast - I am from Brooklyn, NY and Cortlandt is from Glastonbury, CT. We had been living in the Bay Area for 6 years and just wanted to do something new. So we moved across the country and found the Hudson Valley to be an easy place to live and affordable for opening our own brewery.
Some local brewers I've spoken with are working towards (or are already) using 100% NYS ingredients. Do you work with any local farms?
Yes we do. We have used fruit ingredients from the Locust Grove Fruit Farm in Milton NY, we have used NY State malt from New York Craft Malt in Genesee County, and we have used barrels for our barrel aged beer from Coppersea Distilling near New Paltz, NY.
Where does your inspiration come from for new styles of beer?
We look at the current menu of beers that we have a fill in any gaps we have. We pride ourselves in carrying all styles of beer, so we just experiment with new styles. We also look at the season and project what will be needed, such as with fall arriving we now have an Oktoberfest and introduce more darker beer styles - Black Lager, Brown, Imperial Reds, etc.-
What has been your favorite beer to brew and drink?
A super popular beer we recently had was our Watermelon Wheat on Nitro! It was just a super refreshing beer made even better on Nitro gas.-
Have there been any challenges since opening up in 2018?
Covid certainly threw us for a loop, but it was a blessing in disguise. It gave us time to re-evaluate a lot of what we were doing and we changed a lot of our procedures to be more streamlined and cost efficient.
What has been one of your favorite parts of opening King's Court?
Meeting a lot more people and working for ourselves. It's great to wake up and have control of your own time.
Where do you see the future of brewing for yourself and the industry?
We plan to continue doing what we're doing - creating great beer and helping educate people about what quality beer is. We're also seeing a return to more traditional styles of beer and the public becoming more aware of what makes a beer good quality.
Kings Court Brewing is open Thursdays and Fridays 4-10pm, Saturdays 2-10pm, and 2-6pm Sundays.
Take the 30 minute drive north of Homespun to visit them, or you can pick-up a 4 pack in our retail shop to give them a try.
Currently available @ Homespun Foods—
Strawberry Kisses Strawberry Blonde 5.5%
Into the Night Black Lager 4.5%
Mosaicspace West Coast Pale Ale 5.5%
Frog King Amber Ale 6%
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