Friday, May 3, 2024

Highland Brewing: A Guide to Visiting the Very First Asheville Brewery

highland brewing company old charlotte highway asheville nc

ClosePosh without being stuffy, casual without being boring – The Barrel Room features racks of barrels, skylights, glass garage doors, a catering kitchen, and a private bar with views of our barrel-aged beer production space. We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. These spaces promise to be hopping on Saturday, May 4, for the brewery’s Big Bash celebration, during which multiple new beers will be available on draft, including OG Dub IPA, named in honor of Wong, and The Long Game tropical lager.

highland brewing company old charlotte highway asheville nc

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Highland Brewing was founded in 1994 by retired engineer and entrepreneur Oscar Wong, establishing it as the pioneer of Asheville, NC’s now booming craft beer industry. Proudly regional, Highland’s beers are distributed in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. Highland is committed to quality and sustainability, boasting the sixth largest solar array in an American craft brewery. Today, the company is led by Wong’s daughter, Leah Wong Ashburn, and serves as the largest independent, family-owned, and operated brewery native to the Southeast.

highland brewing company old charlotte highway asheville nc

Year-Round Beers

But unlike so many fly-by-night microbrewers gone rogue, the first of the many Asheville, NC breweries now has a quarter of a century to its name. Let us craft an authentic brewery experience for your next special occasion. Private event venues include the Rooftop, Event Center and Barrel Room. A vast tree-lined space with shady table seating and a lush lawn to bring your own chairs. The Meadow bar is open for the summer featuring our year-round and small batch beers; cider and wine also available.

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Aside from their original scenic location, Highland is also making a move towards being among the downtown Asheville breweries, opening a second location at S&W Cafeteria. We have a 3-BBL Pilot Brewhouse where we test new brews that are only available on draft at our brewery Taproom and Downtown Taproom. The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate.

Complimentary guided walking tours of the facilities are available every day of the week. They last around 45 minutes, and include a beer tasting to celebrate the occasion. Amongst the many Asheville brewery tours we’ve taken, the Highland Brewery tour ranks right up there with the best.

Highland Brewing Downtown Taproom

She officially joined Highland in 2011 and became company president in 2015. Under her leadership, the brewery underwent a brand refresh in 2018, trading bagpipe-and-beer-toting Scotsman “Scott” for a crisp, clean, compasslike logo. Wong is quick to rattle off facts and figures from those early years but otherwise notes he isn’t much interested in revisiting the brewery’s past.

They first lived in Brevard, where Jonathon taught writing at Blue Ridge Community College and extensively explored the Blue Ridge Parkway and Pisgah National Forest. For the last several years they have lived just off the BRP near Elkin, Southwest Virginia, and the NC High Country. The couple also volunteers with the Surry Old Time Fiddlers Convention, the Elkin Valley Trail Association, and Reeves Downtown School of Music. The S&W Cafeteria is an art deco-style architectural space that’s part of a move to help revitalize Asheville’s downtown (which Highland helped to do back in the 1990s). In addition to their public offerings, Highland Brewery Asheville also has two venues for private events.

For more information, visit Follow Highland on Twitter at @HighlandBrews and Instagram at @HighlandBrewing. Highland Brewing Company was founded in 1994 by retired engineer and entrepreneur Oscar Wong. As the first craft brewery to open in Asheville, NC since Prohibition, Highland became known as the pioneer of the city’s now-booming craft beer industry. Highland's commitment to quality and sustainability boasts the sixth largest solar array in an American craft brewery.

As a perennial feature on Asheville beer tours and one of the city’s best breweries, Highland Brewing Co doesn’t really need to do much more to get noticed. And yet they do, with their many community-minded and environmentally aware initiatives. In 2020, Highland will also be opening a second site in downtown Asheville, at the S&W Cafeteria.

At the time of opening, Highland Brewing Company was Asheville’s first legal brewery since Prohibition. You’ll want to make plans to party with us and raise a glass to Asheville’s first brewery, founded in 1994. Parking is limited and will be $10 per vehicle upon arrival (we recommend ride share!).Want to party in style with a parking pass, exclusive VIP-only venues, private bar areas, and serious swag? Having maxed out brewing capacity at its downtown basement, Highland moved to East Asheville in 2006, taking over the former home of Blue Ridge Motion Picture Studios.

In addition to two bars, street-side seating, and a mezzanine, this location will also offer a food hall, with four different stalls to choose from. For smaller crowds of 100 people or less, they’ll be opening The Barrel Room in spring of 2020. It’s described as “posh without being stuffy, casual without being boring.” The room has a catering kitchen and a private bar in a setting that puts guests right in the middle of the company’s aging barrels. Their official Event Center features a main floor, a mezzanine, and a rooftop beer garden. It can accommodate up to 300 people for a seated dinner, and includes a stage with full audio and visual technology capabilities.

Asheville’s craft beer footprint has grown exponentially since Highland came onto the scene in the mid 1990s. When Wong began his craft beer journey, he was largely brewing alone. Almost 30 years later, around 40 other Asheville breweries have joined the party. In 2006, Highland moved operations to its current East Asheville location, where they’ve since expanded their footprint to include a multifaceted brewing campus and all-around entertainment destination. Now in addition to grabbing a pint or flight in the taproom, you can also have a brew at The Meadow, where there’s a second bar, plus a stage for live music, shady table seating, frequent food trucks, and a lush lawn.

After spending years owning and running a Charlotte-based engineering firm that designed nuclear waste facilities, Wong bought a house in the sleepy mountain town of Asheville and was ready to settle into a slower-paced life. Instead, his home brewing hobby snowballed, and next thing he knew, he was opening a brewery. That mix of consistency and innovation has proved key to Highland’s sustained operations in an ever-changing industry. One notable exception is the popular Cold Mountain Winter Ale, which intentionally evolves slightly from year to year with different ingredients. Highland is now the largest family-owned brewery in the Southeast, and currently run by Oscar’s daughter, CEO Leah Wong Ashburn. Visiting Highland should be a big draw for anyone doing Asheville tours.

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