Sierra Nevada

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was established in 1979 by homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi in Chico, California, United States. The brewery was named after Grossman’s love of hiking in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. They started with $50,000 in loans from friends and family and pieced together discarded dairy equipment and scrapyard metal to create their brewing equipment. The first batch brewed on premises was its Pale Ale, in November 1980.

As of 2016, Sierra Nevada Brewing is the seventh-largest brewing company in the United States and is the third largest privately owned brewery in the United States. The brewery was named “”Green Business of the Year”” by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 for its practices in sustainability.