I’m excited to see that Ken Grossman and everyone at Sierra Nevada are putting in the level of details for their new Mills River, NC facility as they have done in Chico, CA. As they release some of the details of the new brewery, it’s exciting to see them working with Huppmann to get some traditional copper kettles. Details from Blueridgenow:
This week Grossman and his team are headed back to Germany to work once again with brewing equipment manufacturer Huppmann. They'll be dismantling a couple of used brew houses, after which highly skilled coppersmiths from Huppmann will begin retrofitting copper domes onto the four stainless steel kettles Sierra Nevada recently purchased in Germany for the Mills River brewery.
They'll be similar to the copper-clad, stainless steel tanks in Sierra Nevada's larger brew house in Chico when the company expanded on-site in 1998.
The intricate process is a lost art, Grossman said, since the significant cost has reduced demand. For Grossman, though, it was essential that his new brewery mirror the polished look in Chico.
“Copper is very traditional in the brewing industry and it's a beautiful material to work with,” he said. “Today, most of what we have is stainless steel, but we still like the traditional look of copper kettles, so we're going to introduce those back to the brewery in North Carolina.”
It is just one example of the company's goal to establish cohesion between its two sites.
Still, the Sierra Nevada complex at Ferncliff Industrial Park will have its own uniqueness, thanks to the beautiful and varied landscape. The company recently purchased an additional 80 acres of property, giving Sierra Nevada now 184 of the park's 262 acres on which to craft not just beer but a recreational haven for its customers.
A Mills River staffing update also courtesy of BlueRidgeNow:
As co-managers of the plant, Brian Grossman will serve as director of customer experience and Stan Cooper will serve as logistics director. Cooper currently oversees an operation in Chico in which 160 trucks a week leave the brewery, each one hauling the equivalent of 1,400 cases of beer, and thinks the men’s respective backgrounds bode well for the Mills River project.
Brian has a tremendous amount of knowledge and history in not only the family culture but also the quality of beer that's expected and the philosophy in making the beer," Cooper said. "So even though his title is premised on the customer side, that also includes the production side; he will really be focused on the front of the house.
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