We’ll guide you through the brewing process in our beautiful Westside Brewhouse, where you can gaze into our brewing vessels, venture into our Hop Cooler to get your hands on some aromatic whole-cone hops, and talk fermentation while standing beneath our massive 800 barrel tanks. This adventure ends in our Tasting Room where you will try four of our favorite Sierra Nevada beers.

If you are interested in checking out our packaging plant, a Heritage Tour may be the adventure for you! 

Let us take you on a 30-minute sensory adventure through eight traditional and experimental brews. Learn about the styles, origins, ingredients, and a bit of SNBC history as well!

Our founder Ken Grossman started Sierra Nevada with a hand-built brewhouse and the odds stacked against him.  In 1980, that patchwork of pipes, pumps, and tanks began making beers that forever changed the course of American craft brewing. We’ll explore our state-of-the-art production facility and recount the journey that led us from a small homebrew shop in California to becoming one of America’s top craft breweries—still 100% family owned, operated and argued over.

Along the way you’ll get your hands on quality raw ingredients, taste roasted malts and potentially fresh wort runnings, see our Westside Brewhouse, impressive packaging line, filtration area, and tap directly into one of our fermentation tanks for an exclusive taste of beer before it hits the packaging line. This experience concludes in our tasting room where you’ll enjoy a guided tasting of eight delicious and diverse Sierra Nevada beers.

*Closed-toe shoes are required

The Beer Geek Tour will take you through every nook and cranny of our production facility, so we’re keeping the groups small and the experience BIG! This 3.5 hour hands-on adventure is sure to impress.

We’ll talk craft beer and raw materials before heading into the heart of the brewery. We’ll see the traditional German control board in our Eastside Brewhouse, venture through our vast cellars where you’ll sample brews right from the tanks, and walk our packaging floor for an up-close look at our bottling and canning process. We’ll even send you home with an exclusive Beer Geek T-shirt and a Sierra Nevada growler to fill with some of the tasty beer that you’re now an expert on!

*Closed-toe shoes are required.  A warm layer is recommended during the colder months.

You want to see the nitty-gritty, the cloaked inner workings? We’ll explore the brewing process from underground in our Westside Brewhouse basement—a hidden world rarely seen—wander through our gigantic beer warehouse, hop on our Time Machine and roll around the Brewery grounds. Your behind-the-scenes journey includes a tasting of rare beer from our Pilot Brewhouse Cellar, as well as a few of our taps in the tasting room.

*Closed-toe shoes are required

Heavy on hops, that was always the brewery plan.  We’ve showcased these magnificent botanicals since the beginning, helping pioneer the American-style IPA that’s become a vast playground for craft brewers everywhere. On the Hop Head Tour, we’ll dive into the evolution of craft beer’s most popular style—the India Pale Ale—and how it came to reign supreme among beer drinkers.

We’ll explore our massive hop freezers—a sea of lupulin aroma—the copper-clad brewhouses, and the seemingly never-ending fermentation cellars.  You’ll have the chance to sample various IPAs fresh off our fermentation tanks before finishing with a guided sampling of a few beers in our tasting room.

*Hop Head tour season runs August-November. Private tours available year-round.  Please note that this tour requires closed-toe shoes. 

Our sustainability tour covers much of the sunny brewery grounds, showcasing our alternative energy efforts and many of the initiatives based on our “reduce, reuse, recycle, rot” philosophy.  You’ll check out one of California’s largest privately owned solar installations (10,500+ panels!), our micro turbine technology, and the remarkable HotRot composter.  We’ll also discuss our recycling and conservation program that helps us divert 99.8% of our solid waste away from landfills.  There’s not much that beats walking through our lush garden, gazing at our beautiful hop field, and taking in the view with a cold can of Sierra Nevada beer.

*Sustainability tour season runs April-October. Private tours available year-round.  Please note that this tour requires closed-toe shoes and will take place rain or shine.  Protective weather gear is recommended.

CAUTION: Bigfoot Sighting! Casual beer explorers beware!

This special tasting focuses on the history of the unique Barleywine beer style and includes a “vertical tasting”—a year-by-year comparison—of our Bigfoot Barleywine Ale, celebrating its 36th year in production.

We’ve been aging this beast of a beer in our temperature-controlled cellar for up to eight years, letting the flavors grow, mature and get tangled. You’ll sample a Bigfoot flight that includes a sneak preview of the 2020 batch alongside a few older vintages. We’ll explore the ingredients that make Bigfoot a legend and finish off the tasting with a special barrel-aged version.

Come join us for this vertical-taste adventure before it disappears back into the woods!  Cheers!

*Bigfoot Vertical Tasting offered in January only. 

If you’d like to go at your own pace or are accompanied by children under 12 years old, we invite you to head upstairs to the Mezzanine and check out some awesome antique brewing equipment, an expansive bottle collection, and don’t forget the West Brewhouse Catwalk! Plaques along the route will tell the story of the shining pipes and tanks you’ll see along the way.

* Mezzanine is subject to close for some special events. Feel free to call us at 530-899-4776 to make sure this option is available for your visit.