The 38th annual Chico Wildflower Century, one of California’s top cycling events, saw 3,300 people in the saddle. They sign up for various reasons: tradition, camaraderie, or crossing one off the bucket list. “I just ride so I can eat pizza for the rest of my life,” says Ben, a 33-year-old from San Francisco who’s made the trek to Chico for the past five years. Ben’s taking a breather at...
Read More
Through Facebook and Twitter we recently invited anyone who had a question for Ken Grossman to toss it our way. He'll answer several next month in a video that we'll plug into a new blog post. Take a look below at some of what's been asked so far, and if you're inspired, follow the directions to participate. Cheers!
Read More
When great beer complements live music, all of your senses come alive.When we opened our live music venue, the Sierra Nevada Big Room, in 2003, that's exactly what we had in mind. Over the years, the Big Room, located at our brewery in Chico, CA, has been home to plenty of local talent. A small, intimate, 350-seat venue, the space draws an eclectic variety of music from restrained acoustic shows...
Read More
When you visit our Chico, CA, brewery, you'll see bikes everywhere, in one form or another. It might be Beer Campers pedaling one of our beer bikes. Certainly outside our pub you'll see plenty of local commuters locked to our 5-gallon-keg bike racks. Someone might even be pumping up tires or adjusting a chain at our public bicycle maintenance station.Cycling is part of who we are, what we like to...
Read MoreLast month you flooded us through Facebook and Twitter with great questions for Ken Grossman. He combed through them and had fun answering a few in this video (stick around for the end!). He also typed up several other answers to hit on a variety of topics.Let us know if this is something you'd like to see on a more consistent basis. Use the hashtag #SNBCBlog on Twitter or head...
Read More
The anatomy of a can might seem pretty basic, but every single Pale Ale can was once part of a 25,000-pound roll of aluminum—a true behemoth.When we first considered putting Pale Ale in cans, our founder, Ken Grossman, visited Ball Corporation with a healthy dose of skepticism and an obsession with quality to see the process for himself. He knew they were leaders in canning technology, but needed to ensure...
Read More
Buy A Copy Here!Ken Grossman has a knack for flavor and aroma, but before he put that gift toward beer, he built stink bombs that drove his entire junior high school outside gasping for air.His creativity was misguided at times, sure, but Ken simply has an engineering mind that's been on overdrive since childhood. (Scratch that—since infancy; he was unfortunately enamored with electrical outlets while still in diapers.) Beyond the...
Read More
I first met Fred Eckhardt as a fledgling homebrewer back in the early '70s through his book "A Treatise on Lager Beers." Fred's was one of the first books focusing on the small-scale brewing of quality beer, and a major influence on my brewing.Years later, during our 30th Anniversary celebration, I had the opportunity to brew with him, and we really got to know each other in a different way.Fred...
Read More
An engineer at heart, Ken Grossman has loved bikes since he was a kid. His first visit to Chico preceded a long bike tour with friends along the Northern California coast. And even while running his home brewing store in Chico, Ken over several years worked as a mechanic in four Chico bike shops.Through his work as a bike mechanic, Ken crossed paths with Jeff Lindsay, a longtime Chico resident...
Read More