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Sierra Nevada Brewing

Used dairy tanks, a soft-drink bottler and equipment salvaged from defunct breweries were the foundation for the small brewery Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi started in Chico, Calif., in 1979.


Named for Grossman’s favorite backpacking spot, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was born, and on Nov. 15, 1980, Sierra Nevada brewed its first batch of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – a beer soon to become a landmark in American craft brewing with its premium ingredients and copious hops. Over a decade, demand began to outpace Sierra Nevada’s brewing capacity, and the brewery moved to its current site in 1989.


A 100-barrel copper brew house met demand into the 1990s, but in 1997 Grossman had the original coppersmiths match new kettles to the originals and increased the brewery’s capacity to about 800,000 barrels per year. A brand-new brewery opened in 2014 in Mills River, N.C., to ease the flow of year-round and seasonal Sierra Nevada beers to eastern states.


Sierra Nevada’s selections beyond the Pale Ale now include more than a dozen year-round, seasonal and special-release beers. Always innovating, Sierra Nevada began collaborating in 2011 with the Cistercian monks at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, Calif., to produce a series of Belgian-style abbey ales called the Ovila series. A portion of the proceeds from Ovila sales go toward restoring a building on the abbey grounds.

Source: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.


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