Narrow Gauge Brewing Company in Florissant has brought home a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival for its King Fallen Flag, competing in one of the toughest categories of them all: Juicy or Hazy Imperial India Pale Ale.
The gold medal in the category went to tracing the departed by everywhere brewery in Orange, California — a reminder that this field is packed with the country’s most innovative haze makers. (And, yes, that brewery does not use capital letters.)
This marks Narrow Gauge’s third GABF medal, following a gold for Saft in 2023 (Specialty Berliner-Style Weisse) and a silver for Meersalz in 2019 (German-Style Sour Ale).
For brewer Jeff Hardesty, though, this one hits different. King Fallen Flag represents years of quiet refinement — and the lasting influence of a beer that changed how St. Louis drinks IPA.
The night I met the godfather
I first met Jeff Hardesty back in 2018 during St. Louis Craft Beer Week. He was giving a talk at Gezellig, the now-gone Grove beer bar that once felt like the beating heart of the city’s craft scene. That night, I started calling him what I still do today — the godfather of St. Louis’ hazy beer movement.
Hardesty spoke about the early days of Fallen Flag, his first and most famous hazy IPA.
“Missouri didn’t have a lot of breweries making the style, and I was seeing customer demand, so I tried to figure out how to make it,” he told me.
It took him two full years to develop the recipe for Fallen Flag — a process of fine-tuning water chemistry, hop timing, and yeast selection until the balance clicked. “Correct water profiles, hop timing, and finding the right yeasts make this a hard beer to brew,” he explained, his tone equal parts brewer and chemist.
He laughed as he described swapping wheat for oats — “Too much wheat makes you feel like crap,” he said — and how precision became part of his brewing DNA. He even installed a flow meter to ensure every batch used the same water volume.
That night made one thing clear: Hardesty wasn’t chasing haze for hype. He was chasing consistency — and a beer that expressed hops as softly and cleanly as possible.
From Fallen Flag to the King
After tasting a Trillium New England IPA during a trip to Tampa, Hardesty knew the style had something special — soft bitterness, silky mouthfeel, bright aromatics. That experience inspired Fallen Flag, the 7% New England-style IPA that became Narrow Gauge’s breakout beer.
Fans fell hard for it. And soon, Hardesty decided to level up — literally. King Fallen Flag, the imperial version, clocks in at 8.6% ABV and 70 IBU, double dry-hopped with Citra and Mosaic for a burst of mango, mandarin, and pine.
If Fallen Flag was the spark, King Fallen Flag was the crown — richer, rounder, and every bit as balanced.
A win for craft precision
The Juicy or Hazy Imperial IPA category at GABF is notoriously competitive. Brewers across the country chase that perfect balance of tropical hop intensity and drinkable smoothness — a combination that’s much harder to pull off than it looks.
King Fallen Flag nails it. Craft Beer & Brewing describes it as “sweet orange and pith” up front, with “mango, coconut, and a dry complexity” that keeps you coming back. Fans simply call it “Fallen Flag on steroids.”
For Hardesty, this silver medal isn’t just another notch on the tap handle — it’s validation of years spent refining a style most brewers still treat like an experiment.
From Gezellig lectures to gold medals, from Florissant basements to festival podiums, Narrow Gauge continues to prove what St. Louis beer is capable of.
🍺 Why you should try it: Because King Fallen Flag isn’t just a great beer — it’s a symbol of how precision and persistence built one of St. Louis’ defining beer styles.
