Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is a brewery located in Chico, CA, USA. Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale is the second-best-selling craft beer in the United States, behind Boston Beer Company's Samuel Adams Boston Lager. As of 2012, it is the seventh-largest brewing company in the United States.
History[]
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. 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 mountains of the Sierra Nevada. With loans from friends and family, Grossman and Camusi rented a 3,000-square-foot warehouse and pieced together discarded dairy equipment and scrapyard metal to create their brewing equipment. Later, they 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 brewing company sold 950 barrels of beer in its first year. These days, it sells 800,000 barrels per year.