Hops are the backbone of craft beer but most beer lovers have never seen hops in their natural state. In 2005, Sierra Nevada planted an onsite experimental hop yard that eventually grew to 10 acres. All of our hops are harvested and used to brew our Estate Harvest IPA. Our hops are certified organic by Oregon Tilth as well as Salmon Safe certified.

In addition to our estate hops, we also farm 100 acres of two-row barley, rotational crops, and nitrogen fixing cover crops. The crops help build and maintain soil health and the barley is harvested, malted, and combined with our estate hops for our Estate Harvest IPA. Like our vegetable garden, greenhouse, and micro green chamber, the fields are certified organic by Oregon Tilth.

The easiest way to have the freshest, most local produce is to grow it yourself. This is why we farm 2 acres of produce for our restaurant right next door. We’re able to supply guests with year-round, high quality herbs and vegetables and topped it off with a small orchard for stone fruits and citrus. The garden is certified organic by the Oregon Tilth.

A commercial greenhouse assists with onsite agricultural activities so we can grow food for the restaurant from seeds and cultivate our own landscaping vegetation. The greenhouse is accompanied by a micro green chamber which you’ll find adorning many of our dishes in the restaurant. These areas are also certified organic by Oregon Tilth.

Recognizing the severity of droughts in California, we converted landscaping from water-thirsty lawns to drought resistant, native plants and replaced ground cover with xeriscapes.

All used fryer oil leftover from making french fries and other fried food is used to make biodiesel in an onsite processor. The biodiesel is then used in our fleet of local and long-haul trucks that deliver beer throughout California.

After the mashing and lautering process, malted barley has done it’s job in the brewhouse and is no longer needed. Spent grain, along with spent yeast from fermentation, is moved to holding tanks before being metered into trailers headed for regional cattle and dairy farms. Spent grain and yeast are rich in protein and provide a nutritional feed for livestock. These brewing byproducts are fed to animals within about 75 miles of the brewery.

We own and operate a rail transfer facility two miles from the brewery to receive rail cars of malt. Rail transportation is cost effective and incredibly efficient, using less fuel, eliminating trucks from the road, and reducing packaging waste. Each rail car holds 3-4 truckloads of malt which are delivered as needed to the brewery and offloaded into our grain storage silos.

Brewery wastewater has a high organic content which, left untreated, would place a heavy burden on Chico’s wastewater treatment plant. Our process wastewater treatment plant, installed in 2002, includes solids removal, anaerobic digestion, and aerobic treatment processes. This system removes over 95% of the organic load in the water, allowing the City to easily handle the remainder.

During the anaerobic phase of the wastewater treatment process, a methane-rich biogas is generated which provides a fuel source we can use in our boilers— the workhorses of a brewery— to offset the use of purchased natural gas.

Commissioned in 2010, our HotRot composter is the first of its kind in the U.S. This impressive machine turns discarded food from the restaurant, food scraps from break rooms, and a portion of our spent brewing ingredients into compost that is then incorporated back into our agricultural activities. Composting is a simple yet powerful solution to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Why stop there? We also installed individual solar systems to provide power for our rail transfer facility, our onsite daycare, and an office building addition.

To protect the quality and integrity of our beers, we keep them cooled from start to (hopefully) the time it reaches your refrigerator. To reduce diesel consumption, noise, and emissions, we’ve installed electrified trailer parking onsite to power the trailer’s refrigeration units which keep beer cold while waiting to be driven offsite.

To reduce spikes in electrical grid demand, we installed a 1 megawatt hour Tesla battery system which can discharge stored electricity when our electrical load exceeds our self-generation capacity. When excess generation capacity is available, the batteries are recharged for later. This system dramatically reduces our utility costs and adds to the overall efficacy of our energy generation portfolio.

We take waste diversion seriously at Sierra Nevada. Our Chico brewery was certified as a Platinum TRUE Zero Waste facility in 2013, the first to achieve this level. We source separate as many materials as possible for recycling to create clean streams for recycling and increased revenue for high value materials like cardboard and shrink wrap. Excluding spent grain, we currently divert 95% of our total solid waste from landfill.