Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was established in 1979 by homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi in Chico, California, United States.

[3] The brewery was named "Green Business of the Year" by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 for its practices in sustainability.

[5][6] Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was founded in 1980, with founders Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi expanding their homebrewing hobby into a brewery in Chico, California.

A year later, Grossman and Camusi added the Sierra Nevada Taproom and Restaurant, which serves lunch and dinner and includes a giftshop.

[14] In January 2012, Sierra Nevada announced it would build a second brewing facility with an attached restaurant in Mills River, North Carolina.

[12] Whereas many of the newly spawned microbreweries of the 1980s went out of business, Sierra Nevada Brewing endured to become one of the largest independent brewers in the country, whose beers were noted for their "character and complexity".

[5][8] Grossman believed many microbrewers of the early 1980s had put out an inferior product due to lack of preparation for the financial and mechanical realities of commercial brewing, which were a "much different process" from homebrewing.

[5] For its 30th anniversary in 2010, the company released a series of collaborative beers with the assistance of those Grossman considered an early influence on his brewing: Charlie Papazian, Fred Eckhardt, Fritz Maytag (Anchor) and Jack McAuliffe (New Albion).

[12] In November 2010, Stansbury Publishing released Hops and Dreams: The Story of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co, written by California State University, Chico professor Rob Burton, who researched the company for three years.

[19] The company has claimed to be neutral on political issues, and reiterated this stance in 2010 when it was erroneously linked by a beer industry group to opposing the California Proposition 19 of that year, which would have legalized marijuana in the state.

[26] The company owns one mile of railway in Chico for use in intermodal freight transport, which aids in reducing the brewery's carbon footprint.

The brewery's year-round offerings include its Pale Ale, Porter, Stout, Torpedo 'Extra' IPA, Kellerweis Hefeweizen, and Hazy Little Thing.

[9][32][33] Sierra Nevada's Porter, along with its heavier Stout version, have been described by writer Michael Jackson as "gently coffeish" and "beautifully roasty" examples of their respective styles.

The Chico Estate Harvest Ale is brewed with organic wet hops and barley grown on the brewery's premises.

The "Resilience Butte County Proud IPA" is a limited edition IPA, released to benefit recovery efforts for the Camp Fire, which impacted areas nearby Sierra Nevada's Chico brewery in 2018; about 50 Sierra Nevada employees lost their homes in the fire.