Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is a privately held American brewery founded in 1980 in Chico, California by homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi, financed with 50,000 dollars borrowed from friends and family. As of 2016 it ranked as the seventh-largest brewer in the United States and the third-largest privately owned brewery, producing about 1,250,000 barrels annually with roughly 1,050 employees and a second brewing facility in Mills River, North Carolina that opened in 2014; Ken Grossman remains the company's owner. Known for its flagship Pale Ale and Celebration IPA, the brewery is considered one of the earliest and most influential American craft breweries of the late twentieth century and received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Green Business of the Year award in 2010 for sustainability practices including solar power generation.