Item description for Sierra Nevada Beer Logo 16oz Pint Glass

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was established in 1979 by homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi in Chico, California, United States. The brewery produced 786,000 US bbl (922,000 hl) in 2010, and 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. 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 $50,000 in loans from friends and family, Grossman and Camusi rented a 3,000 sq ft (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 continues to be released as a winter seasonal. The company sold 950 US beer barrels (1,110 hl) of beer in its first year and doubled that amount in the second. The company's first employee was Steve Harrison, who was put in charge of marketing and sales. Head brewer Steve Dresler was hired in 1983, when its output was 25 to 30 barrels per week, and retired in 2017. The company distributed the beer itself in the early 1980s, struggling with financial and marketing problems. 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 US beer barrels (14,000 hl) per year, causing the company to pursue building a new brewery. In 1988, the brewery moved into a 100-barrel brewhouse, with four open fermenters, and eleven 200 US bbl (230 hl) secondary fermenters. A year later, Grossman and Camusi added the Sierra Nevada Taproom and Restaurant, which serves lunch and dinner and includes a giftshop. In 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 employed about 450 people in 2011. In January 2012, Sierra Nevada announced it would build a second brewing facility with an attached restaurant in Mills River, North Carolina. The LEED-Platinum-certified building opened in early 2014 on a forested tract adjacent to Asheville Regional Airport, re-using the cut-down trees as lumber both in the building and for the rainwater cisterns that flush the toilets. In 2013, the company opened the "Torpedo Room" in Berkeley, their first tasting room outside of Chico. In January 2017, Sierra Nevada issued a voluntary recall of certain 12-ounce bottles of different beers in 36 states due to a manufacturing defect that had possibly introduced chipped pieces of glass into the bottle.

The brewery's year-round offerings include its Pale Ale, Porter, Stout, Torpedo 'Extra' IPA, Kellerweis Hefeweizen, Nooner Pilsner, Hop Hunter IPA, and Hazy Little Thing. Sierra's flagship Pale Ale has been described as "a balance between aggressive hops and hearty malt flavor", with its Cascade hops offering a grapefruit aroma and fruity palate. Like several other Sierra Nevada offerings, it is bottle-conditioned. It is the best-selling pale ale in the United States as of 2012. Sierra Nevada's Porter, along with its heavier Stout version, have been described by writer Michael Jackson as "gently coffeish" and "beautifully roasty" examples of their respective styles. The two offerings have been brewed since the company's first year of operation. Torpedo is an American India Pale Ale, and Kellerweis is a traditional Bavarian hefeweizen. Both were introduced as nationwide offerings in 2009.

Annual "Special Release" beers produced by Sierra Nevada include Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale, Hemisphere Harvest Ales and Chico Harvest Estate Ale. Bigfoot is brewed with two types of malt and three differing hops, and tops out at 9.6%ABV. It is a barleywine, but due to alcohol laws in the U.S. it must be marketed as a "barleywine style ale". Only alcohols derived from fruits, not grains, can be marketed as wine. It first won medals at the Great American Beer Festival in 1987. It is generally released January–February of each year. The brewery releases both a Northern and Southern Hemisphere Harvest "wet hop" ale. Introduced in 1996 as Harvest Ale, Northern Hemisphere utilizes wet (undried) hops from eastern Washington for its "fresh harvest" ale. It was the first fresh-hop ale brewed in the United States. The brewery later introduced Southern Hemisphere which features wet hops from New Zealand. The Chico Estate Harvest Ale is brewed with organic wet hops and barley grown on the brewery's premises. Old Chico Crystal Wheat, a wheat beer, is named in memory of the Chico Brewery which operated in the town during the 19th century. Old Chico brand beers are only distributed in the northern California area around Chico. The "Resilience Butte County Proud IPA" is a limited edition IPA, released to benefit recovery efforts for the Camp Fire, which impacted areas nearby Sierra Nevada's Chico brewery in 2018; about 50 Sierra Nevada employees lost their homes in the fire. Resilience IPA is brewed at the Chico and Mills River, North Carolina breweries, and over 1,500 other breweries signed up to brew and sell the beer.