This new sister to the original Chico, California, brewery will be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, with a focus on alternative energy, environmentally conscious construction, reforestation, and river quality monitoring and protection. It sits on a 190-acre piece of land on the French Broad River, and most of the property will stay intact as wild space. Sierra Nevada also plans to develop a trail system there with river access.
"We were contemplating the best ways to pull the curtain back and share this new space,” says Sierra Nevada communications manager Ryan Arnold. “We knew we wouldn’t have been able to open a second location without the momentum of the American craft beer movement. So instead of making the celebration about us, we thought, ‘Let’s celebrate the success of American craft beer’.”
And so they are, with the Beer Camp Across America collaboration series. Sierra Nevada is hosting twelve breweries at its Chico location to brew test-batch beers on their 10-barrel pilot system. When the test batches are complete, the beers will be made in one of Sierra Nevada’s 200-barrel brewhouses and put into a collaboration 12-pack that is slated for release in July.