diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 7701b20d7..d8bab82e0 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -39,3 +39,4 @@
 * [BUGFIX] spanlogger: Support multiple tenant IDs. #59
 * [BUGFIX] Memberlist: fixed corrupted packets when sending compound messages with more than 255 messages or messages bigger than 64KB. #85
 * [BUGFIX] Ring: `ring_member_ownership_percent` and `ring_tokens_owned` metrics are not updated on scale down. #109
+* [BUGFIX] Allow in-memory kv-client to support multiple codec #132
diff --git a/kv/client.go b/kv/client.go
index 7131975ee..42bf55954 100644
--- a/kv/client.go
+++ b/kv/client.go
@@ -33,8 +33,10 @@ func (r *role) Labels() prometheus.Labels {
 // The NewInMemoryKVClient returned by NewClient() is a singleton, so
 // that distributors and ingesters started in the same process can
 // find themselves.
-var inmemoryStoreInit sync.Once
-var inmemoryStore Client
+var (
+	inmemoryStoreInit sync.Once
+	inmemoryStore     *consul.Client
+)
 
 // StoreConfig is a configuration used for building single store client, either
 // Consul, Etcd, Memberlist or MultiClient. It was extracted from Config to keep
@@ -146,7 +148,8 @@ func createClient(backend string, prefix string, cfg StoreConfig, codec codec.Co
 		inmemoryStoreInit.Do(func() {
 			inmemoryStore, _ = consul.NewInMemoryClient(codec, logger, reg)
 		})
-		client = inmemoryStore
+		// however we swap the codec so that we can encode different type of values.
+		client = inmemoryStore.WithCodec(codec)
 
 	case "memberlist":
 		kv, err := cfg.MemberlistKV()
diff --git a/kv/client_test.go b/kv/client_test.go
index e6bc21762..606090c72 100644
--- a/kv/client_test.go
+++ b/kv/client_test.go
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ import (
 	"testing"
 	"time"
 
+	"github.com/go-kit/log"
 	"github.com/gogo/protobuf/proto"
 	"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus"
 	"github.com/stretchr/testify/assert"
@@ -96,7 +97,6 @@ func Test_createClient_multiBackend_mustContainRoleAndTypeLabels(t *testing.T) {
 	require.Equal(t, "primary", actual["multi"])
 	require.Equal(t, "primary", actual["inmemory"])
 	require.Equal(t, "secondary", actual["mock"])
-
 }
 
 func typeToRoleMapHistogramLabels(t *testing.T, reg prometheus.Gatherer, histogramWithRoleLabels string) map[string]string {
@@ -124,6 +124,7 @@ func typeToRoleMapHistogramLabels(t *testing.T, reg prometheus.Gatherer, histogr
 	}
 	return result
 }
+
 func newConfigsForTest() (cfg StoreConfig, c codec.Codec) {
 	cfg = StoreConfig{
 		Multi: MultiConfig{
@@ -153,8 +154,7 @@ func (m *mockMessage) ProtoMessage() {
 	panic("do not use")
 }
 
-type testLogger struct {
-}
+type testLogger struct{}
 
 func (l testLogger) Log(keyvals ...interface{}) error {
 	return nil
@@ -170,3 +170,38 @@ func TestDefaultStoreValue(t *testing.T) {
 	cfg2.RegisterFlagsWithPrefix("", "", flag.NewFlagSet("test", flag.PanicOnError))
 	assert.Equal(t, "memberlist", cfg2.Store)
 }
+
+type stringCodec struct {
+	value string
+}
+
+func (c stringCodec) Decode([]byte) (interface{}, error) {
+	return c.value, nil
+}
+
+func (c stringCodec) Encode(interface{}) ([]byte, error) {
+	return []byte(c.value), nil
+}
+func (c stringCodec) CodecID() string { return c.value }
+
+func TestMultipleInMemoryClient(t *testing.T) {
+	logger := log.NewNopLogger()
+	foo, err := NewClient(Config{
+		Store: "inmemory",
+	}, stringCodec{value: "foo"}, prometheus.NewRegistry(), logger)
+	require.NoError(t, err)
+	bar, err := NewClient(Config{
+		Store: "inmemory",
+	}, stringCodec{value: "bar"}, prometheus.NewRegistry(), logger)
+	require.NoError(t, err)
+
+	require.NoError(t, foo.CAS(context.TODO(), "foo", func(in interface{}) (out interface{}, retry bool, err error) { return "foo", false, nil }))
+	fooKey, err := foo.Get(ctx, "foo")
+	require.NoError(t, err)
+	require.Equal(t, "foo", fooKey.(string))
+
+	require.NoError(t, bar.CAS(context.TODO(), "bar", func(in interface{}) (out interface{}, retry bool, err error) { return "bar", false, nil }))
+	barKey, err := bar.Get(ctx, "bar")
+	require.NoError(t, err)
+	require.Equal(t, "bar", barKey.(string))
+}
diff --git a/kv/consul/client.go b/kv/consul/client.go
index d278d8c9e..63114c547 100644
--- a/kv/consul/client.go
+++ b/kv/consul/client.go
@@ -234,7 +234,6 @@ func (c *Client) WatchKey(ctx context.Context, key string, f func(interface{}) b
 		}
 
 		kvp, meta, err := c.kv.Get(key, queryOptions.WithContext(ctx))
-
 		// Don't backoff if value is not found (kvp == nil). In that case, Consul still returns index value,
 		// and next call to Get will block as expected. We handle missing value below.
 		if err != nil {
@@ -397,3 +396,10 @@ func (c *Client) createRateLimiter() *rate.Limiter {
 	}
 	return rate.NewLimiter(rate.Limit(c.cfg.WatchKeyRateLimit), burst)
 }
+
+// WithCodec Clones and changes the codec of the consul client.
+func (c *Client) WithCodec(codec codec.Codec) *Client {
+	new := *c
+	new.codec = codec
+	return &new
+}