© 2024 WEMU
Serving Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, MI
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
School Closing Information

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company: Ken Grossman

Maren Bruin for NPR

Ken Grossman was experimenting with beer before he was old enough to buy it.

As a high school student in the late 1960s, he bought his first home brewing kit and mixed the ingredients in a bucket, hiding his early batches from his mother.

About ten years later, before most Americans knew what craft beer was, Ken decided to build a brewery in Chico, California.

With $50,000, a few piles of scrap metal and some hand-me-down dairy tanks, Ken and his partner built Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and crafted a beer with a distinctive, hoppy bitterness.

Today, as the third largest craft brewer in the U.S., Sierra Nevada Brewing Company – like so many other businesses – faces unprecedented challenges due to the Coronavirus crisis.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.