{"id":1956,"date":"2009-11-15T21:59:01","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T01:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.2beerguys.com\/blog\/?p=1956"},"modified":"2009-11-15T21:59:02","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T01:59:02","slug":"brewery-profile-high-and-mighty-brewery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/15\/brewery-profile-high-and-mighty-brewery\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewery profile: High and Mighty Brewery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I&#8217;ve had seen High and Mighty Brewery at some local fests and I&#8217;ve purchased their beer in the stores.  This is a very interesting article about the brewery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Beer&#8230; A High &amp; Mighty Liquor &#8211; Julius Caesar<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>High &amp; Mighty brews are made with righteous conviction. We&#8217;re not just brewers &#8211; we&#8217;re beer-evangelists. We&#8217;re the Clergy of Zymurgy, the Priests of Yeasts, the Joyful Congregation of High Fermentation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Every High and Mighty offering will be a powerful wallop for the spirit. Drink one and you&#8217;re going to say &#8220;Smite me again, barkeep!&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><strong>High &amp; Mighty Beers<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Beer of the Gods<\/li>\n<li> Purity of Essence<\/li>\n<li> St. Hubbins Abbey<\/li>\n<li> Home for the Holidays<\/li>\n<li> Two Headed Beast<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Enjoy!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sean<br \/>\n2Beerguys.com<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Drink Craft Beer, You&#8217;ve Earned It!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.2beerguys.com\/images\/forblog\/high_mighty_logo.jpg\" alt=\"High and Mighty Logo\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"150\" height=\"147\" align=\"left\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>THE BEER NUT: Less is the best at High &amp; Mighty<\/strong> <em>(By Norman Miller\/Daily News staff)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Will Shelton<\/strong> hopes to change that philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>The owner of the High &amp; Mighty Brewing Company in <strong>Belchertown<\/strong> wants lower alcohol beers, or session beers, to get the respect they deserve alongside their higher-in-alcohol siblings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to combat the idea that the only beer worth talking about is over the top in some way,&#8221; said Shelton. &#8220;There is nothing wrong with that, but I don&#8217;t see how that got associated with good quality brewing. It&#8217;s much harder to make quality low-alcohol beers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Shelton, who used to run the beer importer Shelton Bros. with his brother Dan for 12 years, started the High &amp; Mighty Brewing Company in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Getting into brewing was pretty simple,&#8221; said Shelton. &#8220;I did the importing thing with my brother and, needless to say, I spent a lot of time around some pretty good beers. It&#8217;s more interesting, and more fun, and more challenging to be selling what I made, as opposed to something someone else made.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As much as I believed in what those other guys were doing, I enjoy pushing something I actually created.&#8221;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.2beerguys.com\/images\/forblog\/highandmighty_beers.jpg\" alt=\"High and Mighty Beers\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" align=\"right\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The name of the brewery was done tongue and cheek, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Shelton brothers<\/strong> have always been known as opinionated, and an online blogger once said of them, &#8220;I&#8217;m sick and tired of this high &amp; mighty Shelton Bros. (expletive deleted).&#8221; That gave him the inspiration for the name, Shelton said.<\/p>\n<p>The idea behind the brewery was not to just brew what everyone else was making, but rather, to brew unique beers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;m doing is, in general, is trying to brew beer that, for the most part, doesn&#8217;t exist,&#8221; Shelton said.<\/p>\n<p>The brewery&#8217;s<strong> first beer<\/strong> was <strong>Beer of the Gods<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Shelton called it a cross between an altbier (German brown ale) and a Kolsh (a light German ale) &#8220;lovingly over-hopped in the American tradition.&#8221; And, keeping with what he likes, the beer is less than 5 percent alcohol by volume.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was trying to create the beer that I&#8217;ve always wanted but I could never get,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Another High &amp; Mighty beer that is unique is <strong>Purity of Essence<\/strong>. He describes the beer as an India pale lager. It&#8217;s basically an India pale ale, brewed as a lager using German hops.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been doing beer festivals for awhile now, and people come up to me and say they don&#8217;t like hops,&#8221; said Shelton. &#8220;It&#8217;s not the hops that people don&#8217;t like. They don&#8217;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&#8217;t like hops.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Two Headed Beast<\/strong> is a chocolaty stout that comes in at a low 4.5 percent ABV. It&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>The brewery&#8217;s current seasonal beer is the <strong>Home for the Holidays<\/strong>, an oak-aged brown ale. It&#8217;s also the highest ABV beer at more than 7 percent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m pretty happy with that one,&#8221; said Shelton. &#8220;For a winter beer, it kind of makes sense.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All proceeds from the sale of Home for the Holidays will be donated to veterans&#8217; organizations. The beer is available in 25 states.<\/p>\n<p>The brewery is also replacing its <strong>St. Hubbins Abbey Ale<\/strong>, now calling it the<strong> St. Hubbins Dubbel<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Shelton said it&#8217;s similar to the Home for the Holidays, without any oak aging. The first batch is being bottled today.<\/p>\n<p>Shelton said he hopes his beers, and other low-alcohol beers, will start getting more recognition.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Drinking low-alcohol beers means you can go out and enjoy yourself without the fear of killing yourself or killing somebody else when you&#8217;re coming home,&#8221; said Shelton.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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&#8217;s 4.5 percent beers were, wondering how you can get so much flavor from them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Resources:<br \/>\n<\/strong><a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outgoing\/www.dailynewstribune.com\/lifestyle\/columnists\/x1659497829\/THE-BEER-NUT-Less-is-the-best-at-High-Mighty');\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.dailynewstribune.com\/lifestyle\/columnists\/x1659497829\/THE-BEER-NUT-Less-is-the-best-at-High-Mighty\">Link to original article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had seen High and Mighty Brewery at some local fests and I&#8217;ve purchased their beer in the stores. This is a very interesting article about the brewery. Beer&#8230; A High &amp; Mighty Liquor &#8211; Julius Caesar High &amp; Mighty brews are made with righteous conviction. We&#8217;re not just brewers &#8211; we&#8217;re beer-evangelists. We&#8217;re the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[548,74,20],"tags":[854,851,859,855,853,856,857,858],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/high_mighty_logo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1966,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions\/1966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}