USA, DE: Mispillion River Brewing to launch new brewpub in Milford

With the lease still unsigned, Mispillion River Brewing’s co-owner Eric Williams would not spill the beans on Mispillion River Brewpub's exact location, but says it will be in Milford on Del. 1, the Delaware Online reported on March 2.

"If it's a parking lot, come in for a pint and some lobster macaroni and cheese," Williams says of his heavily trafficked spot. "The location comes with a hefty price, but we chose wisely."

Adds Mispillion marketing head Lauren Bigelow: "We've spent the past couple of years looking for the exact right spot for it here in Milford and it finally became available. People won't be able to miss it."

With an industrial decor of glass, wood, metal and concrete, the planned brewpub will do more than service beachgoers and their growing hardcore base of fans.

This place for everyone — even your teetotaling Aunt Maria who makes a face anytime she hears you order Mispillion's Reach Around IPA.

"If you come to my tasting room, you're there for craft beer. This is different," Williams says. "It will showcase that we're not just one-sided with a production brewery. We're more than that."

The estimated 9,000-square-foot brewpub will be able to seat about 200 people — more than three times their 61-person tasting room at the brewery, where live musical performances will remain. A head brewer has not yet been hired for the brewpub.

The brewery in the brewpub will be visible from the dining room through glass walls and will produce core beers like Not Today Satan and the aforementioned Reach Around IPA, in addition to more experimental offerings that brewpub customers will taste first.

"It'll be our test lab," Bigelow says.

In a state with more than 20 breweries, it might come as a surprise that Mispillion will be the first Delaware production brewery to spin off its own brewpub. In fact, Williams himself was surprised when he heard it.

But Delaware beer historian John Medkeff Jr. believes that's the case.

Dogfish Head actually started as a brewpub in Rehoboth two years before opening a small distributing brewery in Nassau. Milton's large-scale brewery came in 2011. And the Rehoboth Beach-area location of Fins Ale House and Raw Bar kind of did the same, first opening with Big Oyster Brewery in-house before it was spun off to its own location near Lewes this past fall.

"Incidentally, that was also the trajectory for Delaware’s 19th century lager beer barons, Joseph Stoeckle and John Fehrenbach, as they went from small lager beer saloons to production breweries," says Medkeff, author of "Brewing in Delaware" ($21.99, Arcadia Publishing).

The brewpub announcement comes as Williams reports that Mispillion has grown "30 to 40 percent every year" since opening in 2013. The beers are not only distributed in Delaware, but also states such as Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Even before the brewpub idea was unveiled, it had already been a busy month for the team at Mispillion.

In early February, it was announced that Smyrna's Brick Works Brewing and Eats — a joint venture between Mispillion and Abbott’s Grill —would expand later this year, opening a new location in Long Neck.

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