Profile in beer: Sierra Nevada’s Ken Grossman stays busy

MILLS RIVER - The Sierra Nevada brewery just outside Asheville is already the Southeast's biggest beer maker, but its expansion continues. A new round of tanks will let Sierra produce up to 600,000 barrels of beer annually. Plus, the brewery will open an indoors music venue next year and work on an outdoors events space.

At the center of it all is company founder Ken Grossman, who launched the company 35 years ago, helping create the then-fledgling craft brewing industry. Highly respected, Grossman is a rock star of brewing. If he made albums and played guitar, he would be on the same level as Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan.

But he's not let things go stale during his long tenure. The company is constantly trying out new projects, like a rare beer club that was open to 300 members for a fee of $250. It sold out in just days. And while Sierra is probably best known for its pale ale and IPA, it releases about 100 small-batch beers annually and puts out 30 or so in bottles and cans.

Grossman “lives and breaths world class beer,” said Julia Herz, with the Brewers Association trade group. At 61, he continues to lead by example for the nation’s 4,144 brewers, she said. He divides his time between the company's original brewery in Chico, California, and Mills River. His son Brian Grossman oversees the brewery here.

In an interview with the Citizen-Times, Grossman recalled the birth of craft brewing, discussed the water crisis in California, the Asheville beer scene and weighed in on the chances that Deschutes Brewery of Bend, Oregon, may pick a Carolina location for its expansion..

•On the birth of craft brewing: “People thought we were nuts,” to start Sierra Nevada, he said. “There were just over 40 breweries nationally and that included the largest ones as well as the old regional breweries that had survived Prohibition” such as Anchor Brewing of San Francisco.

Sierra was part of a “first wave” of small American breweries determined to make brews with high quality ingredients. That short list included New Albion of Sonoma, California, generally recognized the first of the craft beer startups in 1976.

“They have pretty much all gone out of business now,” Grossman said of the early breweries.

In the beginning, “we were pretty much on our own,” and just lining up the financing and putting the brewery together was “an amazing amount of effort and struggles,” he said. “You couldn’t buy brewing equipment and had to build it yourself or convert it from some other industry that was close. We couldn’t borrow money from banks and had to plead with friends and family to help us finance the project. I don’t know if there was a ‘eureka moment,’ but by 1983 we were over the hump and by '84, we were no longer losing money. If we could brew it, we could sell it.”

•On water issues: While California has struggled with water shortages, Sierra hasn’t faced a pinch, he said. The Chico brewery “has an aquifer and has not been terribly effected by the lack of rain,” he said. “The whole state of California is under mandatory water restrictions and we have done a lot of conservation,” he said.

That includes not watering the property. Grossman said that breweries are exempt from cutbacks. “They are really focused on watering lawns and other uses that aren’t critical to the economy,” he said.

•On the Asheville scene and Deschutes: “I’ve had some conversations with (Deschutes founder) Gary Fish — we are old friends,” Grossman said. “He didn’t tip his hat on where they were going, You know as much as I know. I think Asheville has a great scene with food, culture, arts, outdoor activities, great water. It’s a bit of an oasis. It would be a great place to land.”

Grossman said he visits the Mills River brewery about once a month.

•On the announced merger of Anheuser Busch-In Bev (makers of Budweiser) and SAB Miller (which controls Miller and Coors in the U.S.): The $106 billion combination would bring together about 30 percent of the world's beer sales and include such brands as Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite, Corona, Peroni and Stella Artois, but still raises regulatory scrutiny, here and overseas. "I’ve been following it,” Grossman said. “The Justice Department will not allow the ownership of Miller and Coors in the U.S. by Anheuser-Busch. They will have to divest of (that) part of it anyway. There is a lot of speculation on what will happen and what kind of restrictions will be placed on the merger. Anything that effects distribution can be a problem. There is not a lot we can do.”

•On what’s next at Sierra: “We will have quite a few new beers coming out, both hoppy and non-hoppy,” he said. “We have a new gose that will be introduced next year.” Gose is an old German style that has a lemon tartness and a salty flavor. “I just tasted it,” he said. “It’s a great beer.”