The young men, in t-shirts and sneakers (and Grossman sporting a heavy beard), sat atop boxes of their brands, including a clearly visible case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The cover of the San Francisco Examiner from featuring Paul Camusi (left) and Ken Grossman. Then, on May 25, 1986, the San Francisco Examiner Sunday magazine slapped Grossman and Camusi on its cover. Still, Sierra Nevada kept at it, the pale ale becoming the signature release of a small, but growing brewery. That beer was far from bitter, and was what most Americans expected in their next can, glass or bottle. That beer had not exactly flown off the shelves- Anchor’s first bottling run for Liberty Ale was 530 cases in June 1975, a year when the introduction of Miller Lite upended the U.S. Grossman also liked the relatively new aroma hop, Cascade, developed in the early 1970s at a USDA research farm in Corvallis, Oregon, and first used commercially by Coors and then Anchor in its Liberty Ale. Both beers were bitterer than most on the market. But Grossman in particular was a fan of the old Ballantine India Pale Ale and of Anchor Liberty Ale (his tour of that San Francisco brewery had helped spark the idea of starting one of his own). Watery light beers were the marketplace king domestically, and lagers far outsold ales in general. Grossman eventually sold a homebrewing-supply shop he owned on the second floor of the old La Grande Hotel in Chico to help underwrite the brewery.įinally, there was the pale ale itself-so dissimilar to so much out there a generation ago. Commercial banks would not loan Grossman and Camusi any money, so they hit up relatives and others, and dug into their own pockets, an initial startup estimate of $50,000 quickly doubling. The founders, for instance, relied on a secondhand bottle filler, washer and labeler purchased for a total of $5,250 in 1980 money and picked up during a marathon road trip to Washington State. For one thing, the brewery that birthed the pale ale was a cobbled-together affair, like a lot of the smaller-batch, more traditional breweries before it and the many that would come after it. (Photo courtesy Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.) Ken Grossman brewing on Sierra Nevada’s early brewhouse.
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