[UPDATE: 16 Mile Brewing Company CLOSED in September 2018]
Look at the bottle my wife brought home from the grocery store a few days ago.
Can you see the name of the brewery on the bottle? That’s the 16 Mile Brewing Company. More importantly, the brewery is located in Delaware. Now, I’ve heard of a certain 12 Mile referenced in Delaware before (look at the top of the page if you need a hint) but 16 Mile was brand new to me. I had to consult their website:
“The 16 Mile Brewing Company name hearkens back to the late 1700’s when Georgetown was still known as Pettijohn’s old field, a rather isolated town, centrally located in Sussex County. The area was ’16 miles from anywhere’ in the county and was the best place for farmers, merchants, and politicians to meet to conduct official business.”
It’s a rare confluence of two of my greatest enjoyments: geo-weirdness and beer-geekery!
The Extent of Those 16 Miles
This is one of those times that I wish I could combine the functionality of various online mapping services into a single super-system. I wish someone would invent tool that mapped county lines and a circle of a specific radius from a known point, to embedded within a WordPress blog.
Well, I need to get over it. That doesn’t exist. Sadly, I don’t have the technical ability to produce it either. So I’ll give you the next best thing. I drew an image that shows a sixteen mile radius around Georgetown made using Free Map Tools and offer a link to a map with Sussex County boundaries.
Use your imagination. Hopefully you’ll see that the “16 miles from anywhere” in Sussex County is remarkably accurate. By the way, the number of geo-oddities packed into tiny Delaware still amazes me. This one comes closer to the Transpeninsular Line than to its more famous 12 Mile cousin at the other end of the state. Nonetheless it’s a circle and it’s in Delaware and it’s good enough for me. I’ll be sure to stop at the brewery the next time I’m on the way to Rehoboth Beach. I’ll be the one talking about all those crazy circles in Delaware.
UPDATE: I did visit the brewery in 2013.
So About the Beer
I tried the beer over the weekend. It was their Old Court Ale. They describe as “An American-style ale that reserves the right to be different. A bit lighter in body, Old Court provides a citrusy hop aroma and caramel finish.” I found it nicely malty, with a dark amber hue and very drinkable. I could probably do more justice to the description if it had been my first beer of the evening rather than the last. I’ll leave it to the likes of regular reader Daniel Harper of Zymurgical Explorations to someday get around to that.
Actually the 22 ounce container isn’t a bottle at all. Rather, it’s an aluminum can shaped like a bottle. That’s a nice size. However, I think they missed a great marketing opportunity. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for 16 Mile to serve their beverages in 16 ounce increments? Then they could take advantage of numerical symmetry.
I know of only one other brewery with a tenuous geo-oddity connection now that I think about it. Southern Tier Brewing Company sits right off the Southern Tier Expressway in western New York. Go a couple hundred miles to the east on the expressway and hit a stretch signed for New York but running through Pennsylvania briefly. I told you it was tenuous.
With no other major contenders, I hereby proclaim 16 Mile to be the official beverage of the 12 Mile Circle blog.
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