At Mill Creek, December is our favorite month for a reason that resonates with the season profoundly – our release of Wishing Well.
Wishing Well, our Coffee Oatmeal Stout, was born out of a desire to give back.
In 2016, when we decided to brew a coffee beer, we were faced with the decision of choosing which great local coffee we should use. We tasted countless brews, smelled innumerable coffee beans, and developed an implacable caffeine addiction. In Nashville, some say the streets smell like BBQ. We don’t contest that, but we’re pretty sure they also smell like coffee.
That November, we had also just come up on our half-year mark of being a production brewery. The past six months opened our eyes to the rapid growth of the industry, its highs and lows, but also, its waste.
For those of you that don’t know, brewing beer requires a lot of water. Like, a lot. From water used in the agricultural process of raw materials to the cleaning of tanks between brews, it takes at least several gallons of water to produce just one gallon of beer (growlermag.com). Our first six months of brewing enlightened us on how much really goes into just one glass.
So when it came to the final decision on what coffee we wanted to use for our stout, the selection was unanimous and obvious.
We teamed up with The Well Coffeehouse, a non-profit coffeehouse that builds water wells in under-developed communities around the world. We named the beer Wishing Well, and it has since become one of our most popular beers. By using The Well’s coffee and donating profits from our beer sales to their cause, this past year, we were able to bring clean drinking water to Mung’oma, Zambia. This water well allows the community to yield up to 12 liters of clean drinking water per minute.
We hope you enjoy Wishing Well, not only for how it tastes but for the larger impact it has. Read more about the incredible work The Well Coffeehouse is doing on their website.
