2beerguys beer blog

Brewery profile: High and Mighty Brewery

I’ve had seen High and Mighty Brewery at some local fests and I’ve purchased their beer in the stores. This is a very interesting article about the brewery.

Beer… A High & Mighty Liquor – Julius Caesar

High & Mighty brews are made with righteous conviction. We’re not just brewers – we’re beer-evangelists. We’re the Clergy of Zymurgy, the Priests of Yeasts, the Joyful Congregation of High Fermentation.

Every High and Mighty offering will be a powerful wallop for the spirit. Drink one and you’re going to say “Smite me again, barkeep!”

High & Mighty Beers

• Beer of the Gods
• Purity of Essence
• St. Hubbins Abbey
• Home for the Holidays
• Two Headed Beast

Enjoy!!!

Sean
2Beerguys.com
Drink Craft Beer, You’ve Earned It!!!

THE BEER NUT: Less is the best at High & Mighty (By Norman Miller/Daily News staff)

Nowadays, for a craft beer to get any kind of buzz, it has to be high in alcohol, hard to get or full of exotic ingredients.

Will Shelton hopes to change that philosophy.

The owner of the High & Mighty Brewing Company in Belchertown wants lower alcohol beers, or session beers, to get the respect they deserve alongside their higher-in-alcohol siblings.

“I’m trying to combat the idea that the only beer worth talking about is over the top in some way,” said Shelton. “There is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t see how that got associated with good quality brewing. It’s much harder to make quality low-alcohol beers.”

Shelton, who used to run the beer importer Shelton Bros. with his brother Dan for 12 years, started the High & Mighty Brewing Company in 2006.

“Getting into brewing was pretty simple,” said Shelton. “I did the importing thing with my brother and, needless to say, I spent a lot of time around some pretty good beers. It’s more interesting, and more fun, and more challenging to be selling what I made, as opposed to something someone else made.

“As much as I believed in what those other guys were doing, I enjoy pushing something I actually created.”

The name of the brewery was done tongue and cheek, he said.

The Shelton brothers have always been known as opinionated, and an online blogger once said of them, “I’m sick and tired of this high & mighty Shelton Bros. (expletive deleted).” That gave him the inspiration for the name, Shelton said.

The idea behind the brewery was not to just brew what everyone else was making, but rather, to brew unique beers.

“What I’m doing is, in general, is trying to brew beer that, for the most part, doesn’t exist,” Shelton said.

The brewery’s first beer was Beer of the Gods.

The beer is a hybrid of German and American brewing styles, Shelton said. A fan of German beers, he finds a lot of them lack the hop flavor he really enjoys.

Shelton called it a cross between an altbier (German brown ale) and a Kolsh (a light German ale) “lovingly over-hopped in the American tradition.” And, keeping with what he likes, the beer is less than 5 percent alcohol by volume.

“I was trying to create the beer that I’ve always wanted but I could never get,” he said.

Another High & Mighty beer that is unique is Purity of Essence. He describes the beer as an India pale lager. It’s basically an India pale ale, brewed as a lager using German hops.

“I’ve been doing beer festivals for awhile now, and people come up to me and say they don’t like hops,” said Shelton. “It’s not the hops that people don’t like. They don’t like the harshness you get with the hops. My goal was to make a really hoppy beer that would appeal to people who don’t like hops.”

The Two Headed Beast is a chocolaty stout that comes in at a low 4.5 percent ABV. It’s made with raw organic cacao beans, which gives it a more bitter chocolate flavor than many chocolate stouts, which seems to have a milk chocolate sweetness.

The brewery’s current seasonal beer is the Home for the Holidays, an oak-aged brown ale. It’s also the highest ABV beer at more than 7 percent.

“I’m pretty happy with that one,” said Shelton. “For a winter beer, it kind of makes sense.”

All proceeds from the sale of Home for the Holidays will be donated to veterans’ organizations. The beer is available in 25 states.

The brewery is also replacing its St. Hubbins Abbey Ale, now calling it the St. Hubbins Dubbel.

Shelton said it’s similar to the Home for the Holidays, without any oak aging. The first batch is being bottled today.

Shelton said he hopes his beers, and other low-alcohol beers, will start getting more recognition.

“Drinking low-alcohol beers means you can go out and enjoy yourself without the fear of killing yourself or killing somebody else when you’re coming home,” said Shelton.

“It would be a better world if you can maintain some sort of pub culture. I just wish more people were talking about how amazing someone’s 4.5 percent beers were, wondering how you can get so much flavor from them.”

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