Jackson Mississippi is a place that has a culture rooted in its soul food, music, and people. The recently opened Fertile Ground Brewery is expanding this culture through their own craft – beer!
The brewery officially opened March 13th. It is located on Manship Street, just a few blocks away from Millsaps. Fertile Ground currently has 15 different taps open, with the beer on tap occasionally changing during different seasons. As co-owner, William Paden says, “We have a ton of different beers. We do everything from saisons to hazy IPAs.” With such a large variety of beers to try, the best way to get a taste of them all is to order a flight costing $12.
Although the brewery doesn’t serve food, they often have food trucks or other events with food for people to enjoy along with a cold one. Anyone can come into the brewery, but you have to be 21 to drink. Fertile Ground also encourages and welcomes beer lovers to bring in their own food to eat while they drink. They also have a large outdoor area with a multitude of benches that make it possible to enjoy a drink outside on a nice day or evening.
Besides brewing beer, the brewery has been doing some community outreach. During the Jackson water crisis, Fertile Ground helped provide multiple local businesses like Native Coffee with clean water to help them stay open. Matt Finn, owner of Native coffee, said that “we could have stayed in business, but it would have been much more difficult without Fertile Ground’s help”, as he explained that Fertile Ground gave them as much water as needed. The brewery has a 4-stage carbon filtration system that has the ability to boil 900 gallons of water at a time. This filtration system is much better and more high-tech than your average at-home sink filter. William mentioned the strength of the system saying, “Even if the city sent us raw sewage, we could turn it into perfectly good drinking water.” This being said, William still believes that Jackson has good brewing water; it just needs some help filtering out some chlorine and phosphates.
He also hopes to see more breweries come to Jackson as he stated, “Hopefully we can be that spark that inspires others to open their own breweries here.” Jackson is already home to some great comfort, soul food, but maybe soon Jackson will be home to some soul beer!
With Fertile Ground being within walking distance from Millsaps, it is the best and only place to get some local Jackson beer. Not only will you get to enjoy a delicious craft beer, you will also be supporting a local business that supports other local businesses. Whether you just want to try one or flight, Fertile Ground is sure to have the beer for you!
