Highland Brewing - Black Watch

We found ourselves at the release party for Black Watch, just one of our regular visits to Highland. It's not my style of beer, so I took a few sips from the wife's and concentrated on their small batch offerings during the visit.

What I did find interesting is the president of Highland, Leah Wong Ashburn (the founders daughter) took the stage to welcome everyone and talk about the beer.

She also said that the Scottish Black Watch regiment had just returned to Scotland from a ME deployment, and that Highland Brewing has been in touch with them, and made arrangements to ship a supply of their Black Watch Double Chocolate Milk Stout to the Black Watch regiment in Scotland.

 

Tried it a few weeks ago, thought it was really well done.

 

Have one sitting in the fridge, waiting to be reviewed. Looking forward to it!

 

Oh, can't wait.

 

Did this make it to Charlotte?

 

I found a few 4 packs at the 201 central in Wesley Chapel today so I would have to say it's in Charlotte.

 

Great beer. I bought a 4 pack, and haven't seen another one since. Medium bodied, velvety and carbonated on the mouth, lots of lactose flavor with enough roast and cacao to balance it. I'd definitely pick up another pack for the very reasonable price point.

So far, highlands warrior series is absolutely on point.

 

I thought it was pretty darn good.

 

Highland has been on fire lately. King MacAlpin was great fresh. Black Watch is excellent and a great candidate for barrel aging. I was fortunate enough to try their new flagship IPA last week. Might be my favorite NC IPA, better than HDnR and Pernicious IMO. And it will be fairly readily available. Canning line is on the way too.

 

I'll be interested to try the new IPA. Have heard a few people say they loved it and a few say they didn't like it at all. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

 

Having one now, pretty good.

 

Had a few tonight. Might be one of the best beers Highland has made.

 

They must be an insider to have tried it, today (12/31/15) is the day they are releasing it.

Leah Wong Ashburn, took over as president of Highland this year from her dad, Oscar Wong (the founder), and combined with their expansion appear much more aggressive in producing new and different product. It's unknown if the change is management or the fact they have resources to 'play' with different ideas, but either way it is for the positive.

I have talked to Oscar Wong, as he often dropped into other breweries for a pint, about their beers, and one comment I made to him probably 3 years ago was their Kashmir IPA isn't what I look for in an IPA. His comment was that he understood, but the sales were good so no changes would be coming.

I also think they relabeled it from Kashmir IPA to Kashmir English Style IPA at some point, as I don't remember the "English Style" being part of the name in the past.

Anyway, Kashmir is being retired, and being replaced with Highland IPA being introduced today, their first release of a new year round brew in many years. It is a West Coast Style IPA.

 

The new IPA is very good but is very similar to other nicely hopped west coast ipa's. I had it at the Cold Mtn release and it is a major improvement over Kashmir.

 

Yeah people who worked at bottle shops/bars or with distributors.

 

I also believe the new head brewer (Ms. Stephenson) that came out of Stone Brewing is also leading the charge to the revamp of the product line.