St. Louis beer fans, mark your calendar now for Saturday, June 1 at 2 p.m. That’s when Six Mile Bridge Brewery will put DDH Amarillo-ish on tap at the Maryland Heights tasting room. It’s the brewery’s first beer out of the tank from new head brewer Ronnie Fink, formerly of Modern Brewery.
Fink describes the New England–style IPA as fruit- and tropical fruit-forward with a 6 percent ABV. “It’s a little outside the box with the hops selection,” Fink says, “a combination of Amarillo, Equinox, and Azacca, from the Pacific Northwest, which I’m using for the first time.” The beer will be available in cans by late June, in time for summer sipping.
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This celebratory beer rollout comes as Six Mile undergoes a significant expansion. Owners Ryan and Lindsay Sherring not only hired Fink as head brewer, but they also added their own canning line in January. And they’ve grown in other ways. Major Brands is now their distributor. Six Mile Bridge Brewery is now distributed throughout Missouri and Kansas, and the beer will be available throughout Illinois later this year as well.
Here in St. Louis, Six Mile is expanding its taproom to three times its current size. The project is on target to open in the fall. “Since Day 1, it’s been in the cards to expand the taproom,” says Sherring. “The taproom is the heartbeat of a brewery. A good taproom builds brand loyalty. We’ll have 16 taps at the bar, which will give us the room to have one-off beers on tap.”
Sherring also invested in a Foedor and a separate bottling line to produce sour beers. He’s made kettle sours to date, but the Foedor should be a game changer and help appeal to a wider audience, Fink says, because it’s often a natural progression to “move from cocktails to wines to sours.”
A kitchen is planned for the taproom, too. Sherring plans to partner with a food-savvy business (to be announced), which will run the culinary side.
The Sherrings also expanded on the home front, welcoming a baby girl, Isla Rae, to their family just eight weeks ago. “It has been the year of expansion for us—for our family and our workplace,” Sherring says. “We continue to push hard to expand our business.”
Looking ahead, 2020 should be a year of stabilization for the burgeoning brewery. For Sherring, overseeing the growth and guiding the business will diminish the time that he spends brewing beer. His primary job will be to keep the company in a steady, profitable position.
“My background is in finance,” he says. “A brewery is a business at the end of the day. There’s been an incredible expansion in the craft market. Will there be a contraction? History does repeat itself. Brewers should be ready to diversify.”
With his business savvy and understanding of the markets, Sherring should be in a good position to plan for continued growth with Fink. “We’ll continue to grow in the brewery, to bring in new people to be on Ronnie’s team,” says Sherring. “Having another brewer in the house to talk things over with is wonderful. We’ll be doing more with barrel-aged beers, stouts, and one-off beers in the taproom. It’s a good time for us.”
