Eric Williams is still blown away, and not just because his head brewer Ryan Maloney may have made the best beer his youthful Mispillion River Brewing Company has produced so far.
A bourbon-barrel aged Stout, going by the name of Short’n Stout, is a limited release of 100 bombers that will be sold and auctioned off by the Milford, Delaware brewery to help honor the life of a slain police officer.
Patrolman Chad Spicer was killed in the line of duty on September 1, 2009 and Williams, the president of Mispillion River, has teamed up with local law enforcement to honor Spicer by raising money for the National Criminal Enforcement Association’s Officer in Distress Fund.
It started with the brewery’s crowd-funding campaign to get new equipment for the tasting room. “One of the bigger ones we had was naming rights to our fermenter,” Williams said. “We thought we would get people that wanted to name it something like “Joe’s Fermenter” or something like that.
“We had a local police officer, TJ Webb, approach me along with four other officers about dedicating one of the fermenters to Chad Spicer. I was blown away that they asked this and wanted to do this at our place. It’s not anything that I had expected to do. To have them think of us and for us to do something for someone who basically gave up his life to protect us. Needless to say it was a really cool thing for them to ask.”
Williams wanted to take it a step further and brew a beer and raise money for a charity of the officer’s choice. “It just snowballed into what we have now,” he said.
The officers will officially dedicate the fermenter on February 26 at the brewery. “When we had the guys come over to try it, we had not even gotten it cold yet, it had just been bottled. I tasted it and looked over at our head brewer, Ryan, who had done this beer from beginning to end, and I could see the smile on his face. He’s usually very humble about the beer he makes, but this one, I could really see he was proud of this one. It’s one of the best beers he has made. … It’s fitting that we made such a great beer for such a great guy that gave up his life to basically protect us.”
The 10-percent alcohol Stout was brewed in the summer of 2014 and aged on whiskey oak barrels over the fall. “We wanted it to smooth out a bit and bring out some of the chocolate and vanilla notes that are in there,” Williams said. “The bourbon is there, but it’s not overpowering you.”
Mispillion River is looking to make a large batch for production to be ready on September 1, 2015, which would be the six-year anniversary of Spicer’s death.
“This is an important mission for us,” Williams said.
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