Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was established in 1979 by homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi in Chico, California, United States. The brewery produced in 2010, and as of 2016, Sierra Nevada Brewing is the seventh-largest brewing company in the United States and is the third largest privately owned brewery in the United States. The brewery was named "Green Business of the Year" by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 for its practices in sustainability. History Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was founded in 1979, with founders Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi expanding their homebrewing hobby into a brewery in Chico, California. Along with the brewery's location, Grossman claims the company's name comes from his love of hiking in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. With $50,000 in loans from friends and family, Grossman and Camusi rented a warehouse and pieced together discarded dairy equipment and scrapyard metal to create their brewing equipment. They later were able to acquire second-hand copper brewing kettles from Germany before moving to their larger, current brewing facility in 1989. The first batch brewed on premises was its Pale Ale, in November 1980. The following year, the brewery introduced Celebration, an IPA, which continues to be released as a winter seasonal. The company sold of beer in its first year and doubled that amount in the second. The company's first employee was Steve Harrison, who was put in charge of marketing and sales. Head brewer Steve Dresler was hired in 1983, when its output was 25 to 30 barrels per week, and retired in 2017. The company distributed the beer itself in the early 1980s, struggling with financial and marketing problems. A 1982 article in the San Francisco Chronicle highlighting the brewery, as well as having its beer sold in prominent restaurants such as Berkeley's Chez Panisse, helped establish a market for Sierra Nevada's beer. By 1987, the brewery was distributing to seven states and production had reached per year, causing the company to pursue building a new brewery. In 1988, the brewery moved into a 100-barrel brewhouse, with four open fermenters, and eleven secondary fermenters. A year later, Grossman and Camusi added the Sierra Nevada Taproom and Restaurant, which serves lunch and dinner and includes a giftshop. In 2000, the brewery opened "The Big Room", a live-music venue located inside the brewery's facilities, featuring a variety of acts including country, bluegrass, folk, rock, blues,