Sierra Nevada Brewing Company - History

History

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company was founded in 1979, with founders Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi expanding their homebrewing hobby into a brewery in Chico, California. Along with the brewery's location, Grossman claims the company's name comes from his love of hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. With $50,000 in loans from friends and family, Grossman & Camusi rented a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) warehouse and pieced together discarded dairy equipment and scrapyard metal to create their brewing equipment. They later were able to acquire second-hand copper brewing kettles from Germany before moving to their larger, current brewing facility in 1989.

The first batch brewed on premises was its Pale Ale, in November 1980. The following year the brewery introduced Celebration, an IPA, which it continues to release as a winter seasonal. The company sold 950 barrels of beer in its first year, and double that amount in the second.

The company's first employee was Steve Harrison, who was put in charge of marketing and sales. The head brewer is Steve Dresler who has been with the brewery since 1983, when its output was 25 to 30 barrels per week.

The company distributed the beer itself in the early 1980s, struggling with financial and marketing issues. A 1982 article in the San Francisco Chronicle highlighting the brewery, as well as having its beer sold in prominent restaurants such as Berkeley's Chez Panisse, helped establish a market for Sierra Nevada's beer.

By 1987, the brewery was distributing to seven states and production had reached 12,000 barrels per year, causing the company to pursue building a new brewery. In 1988, the brewery moved into a 100 barrel brewhouse, with four open-barrel fermenters, and 11 68-barrel secondary fermenters. A year later, Grossman and Camusi added The Sierra Nevada Taproom and Restaurant, which serves lunch and dinner and included a giftshop. In the year 2000, the brewery opened "The Big Room," a live music venue located inside the brewery's facilities, featuring a variety of acts including country, bluegrass, folk, rock, blues and other musical genres.

Camusi retired in 1998 and sold his share in the company to Grossman.

In 2010, Sierra Nevada Brewing partnered with the Abbey of New Clairvaux, with the monastery beginning production of Trappist-style beers in 2011. The Abbey has not yet been sanctioned by the International Trappist Association, and therefore the monastery will not be brewing official Trappist beer.

The brewery currently employs about 450 people.

In January 2012, Sierra Nevada announced it will build a second brewing facility with an attached restaurant in Mills River, North Carolina. It is scheduled to open in early 2014.