The King of Sustainable Brewing

Ken Grossman, Founder of Sierra Nevada

Leave it to a handful of mad scientists/organic farmers/brewers to make their operation a shining example of the Food Revolution at work!  Enter Sierra Nevada, the king of sustainable brewing operations, and the gold standard by which many smaller brewers model themselves.  

Beginning with their inputs, Sierra Nevada insists on non-GMO barley and hops, grown using sustainable farming practices.  They’ve even started their own organic farm on the premises, which supplies both inputs for the beer, as well as local, seasonal produce and meat for the farm-to-table restaurant also on site.  They’ve even developed a closed-loop system of composting the leftovers from the restaurant and brewing process and using it to fertilize their crops, which will once again fuel the operations.

Sierra Nevada has also made remarkable strides in their energy and resource efficiency through utilizing biodiesel and hybrid trucks for their distribution, employing state of the art water conservation technologies, recovering and reusing C02 and methane gas, and finding ways to recycle 99.6% of the solid waste the operation produces.  On top of all this, Sierra Nevada has installed the latest in solar and hydrogen cell technology, to further reduce their impact on the environment.

Sales have been so strong that they’re now in the process of opening a second brewing facility location and restaurant in North Carolina to better keep up with growing demand, and reduce their carbon footprint, so they’re not shipping everything from CA.

Now, who doesn’t want to raise a glass to that!?

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Sierra Nevada

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--Christie Wood

 

Bryce Clark
Culinary Assistant