8/29/2023 0 Comments Highland brewing co![]() “It’s hard to grow in Asheville because if you go to any bar, there’s going to be a Highland on tap,” says Matt McComish, supply chain manager for Highland. ![]() “The new IPA,” McCarley says, “will be a good brand with people.” He noted a former IPA, Kashmir, modeled after English styles and flavored with grassy hops, was simply outdated when it was discontinued in 2015. “For a long time, people may not have expected too much change, but they’ve done a really smart move to branch out and start producing good, hoppy beers,” says McCarley, Brusin’ Ales bottle shop’s manager. Now that the right people and new brands are in place, Highland is readying its next step. We’ve made so many strides, but it can still be so hard with so many breweries in Asheville.” “It’s having specialty programs, it’s spreading the brand out far and wide, it’s reaching the demographic we may be missing because it’s the demographic I’m in. “We’ve accomplished so much this year and I still feel like I’m running in place, waiting for someone to let go of me,” Stephenson says of the success of the brewery’s new direction. ![]() While Ashburn focused on bringing people directly to the brewery, she’s thinking toward what will keep them at the bar. Stephenson’s own vision for where the brewery is going is becoming clearer. What Highland’s brewer likes to make now closely aligns with the full breadth of craft customers, young and old. But within 18 months, the year-round lineup will have expanded multiple times, now half-comprised of hop-forward brews. Its core brands aren’t going away-the Amber, Porter, and Stout are too beloved. In recent months, Highland added a seasonal IPA featuring six different hops and a session IPA made with Ekuanot and Mosaic to its lineup. ![]() Sometimes there’s a little twinge of, ‘Oh shoot, I wish…’ But we’re doing all right.” We bought the property and building and we’re investing in a facility to upgrade it regularly. In many ways, we have our future in our own hands because we’re not leasing a space that could get out of hand in price. We don’t have any regrets being where we are. “We feel that we’re in a very good location, even though we’re outside the buzz,” Wong says. All of which is to say: people don’t have to leave downtown to find whatever they want when it comes to beer. Expand that to the greater metro area and, according to the Chamber of Commerce, the concentration of all breweries is 7.5 times the national average. It’s easy to get there from right off Interstate 240-just 10 minutes.īut place a pin in Asheville’s center and there’s a dozen breweries to visit within a mile radius. The handful of miles that connects downtown Asheville to Highland’s location on Old Charlotte Highway comes across as a metaphorical roadblock. Beer had been a fun distraction to pass his time, but when he retired early and wound up in Asheville, he says he decided to start Highland as a “hobby” along with experienced brewers John McDermott and John Lyda. While brewing “barely drinkable beer” during the 1960s, he worked toward an engineering degree that led to a career dealing with nuclear waste. The Jamaican-born son of Chinese immigrants first came to the U.S. I’ll be patient and I’ll be around.”īy today’s standards, let alone the brewing industry of the mid-’90s, Wong is an outlier. I just told them it’ll take them time and that’s OK. People thought it was too strong or too bitter or too heavy because they were used to light Lagers. “I even had a good friend of mine at a party say, ‘Oscar, you’re going to go broke trying to sell this shit.’ That was the biggest problem-to get people to accept craft beer. “There was a challenge in getting people to accept the beer,” says founder-and Leah’s father-Oscar Wong. From Barons to Barrels with Captain Pabst.Message in a Bottle with Brewery Ommegang.Beer is Labor with East Brother Beer Co.Let Go or Get Dragged by Jerard Fagerberg.Ferments at Low Temps by Stephanie Byce. ![]()
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