Highland Brewing To Release 20th Anniversary Scotch Ale April 19th

Twenty years has passed since Highland Brewing first opened our creaky basement doors. We’ll be celebrating our anniversary with you on April 19th at the PLAID PARTY where you can get our limited edition Highland 20th Anniversary Scotch Ale. In addition to the Scotch Ale, three more beers in the series of 20 will be released that night. The series is a masterpiece of brewing delights:

– Ten recipes from their archives honor the past and ten new recipes look to the future

– Four beers will be brewed on the 50-barrel system and packaged in kegs and 22-ounce bottles, forming a collectible mini-series. Each of these “Big Batches” will be developed by a Highland different brewer or brewers

– Sixteen beers will be kegged

– Three beers are collaborations with the other most senior breweries in town: Wedge, Green Man and French Broad

With 20 beers from April to December, releases will occur every couple of weeks on average, and visitors are likely to find an anniversary brew on tap no matter what day they walk in. Beers will be revealed online, one by one, just prior to their releases.

Oscar Wong, John Lyda and John McDermott bet long on a fledgling industry. In the US, there were 537 craft breweries in 1994. Today there are around 2,800 and it’s growing fast. Since 1994, the dream of being Asheville’s hometown brewery has changed, and it hasn’t.

“We thought we’d be the only ones, and here we are, with more breweries popping up all the time,” said founder Oscar Wong. “It’s terrific. We never thought we’d go this far, and now Leah is taking the company into the next generation, so we have much more to look forward to.”

What hasn’t changed is that, despite vast development of beer culture and breweries in Asheville, Highland is rooted here by location and by name. “Our name anchors us here. The name “Highland” honors the legends of the Scots Irish which are so deeply woven into this area, the Southern Appalachians,” said Leah Wong Ashburn, Vice President. “I love telling people that my father, a Chinese man, born and raised in Jamaica, who considers himself Irish because he went to Notre Dame, owns a Scottish brewery. And now we’re turning 20. How amazing is that?”
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