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April 2017 WINES&VINES 23 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS S t. Helena, Calif.—Ken Grossman, who founded Sierra Nevada brewery in 1980, was a pioneer in revitalizing U.S. beer and has used research and innovation to remain a leader in the industry as it has rapidly grown around him. Grossman was one of the keynote speakers at the third-annual Innovation+Quality (IQ) conference hosted by Wine Business Monthly magazine at Charles Krug Winery. It was the mid-1970s when, after six years of operating a s m a l l h o m e b r e w shop in Chico, Calif., Grossman decided to sell the shop and open a brewery. Early on he realized his nascent operation would only survive if it produced a quality product, so he had a small in-house lab for yeast propagation and quality control, and he made regular trips to the University of California, Davis, to photo- copy journal articles and research papers about brewing. The commitment to quality paid off, as it helped create a local reputation that put Sierra Nevada on the map. The Chico brewery has since grown from a 3,000-square-foot building to a sprawling facil- ity on 40 acres of land. In 2014, Sierra Nevada also built a second brewery in North Carolina to cut down on shipping costs and keep up with demand for the brewery's classic pale ale and the extra hoppy Torpedo. The company now employs more than 1,000 staffers and produces more than 1 million barrels of beer per year. Grossman said the company's commitment to research and development has remained strong throughout its history, and he still spends "quite a bit" on it. The brewery has both an analytical lab with five gas-chromatography machines and other analyzers and a sensory lab. Sierra Nevada has done extensive research into how oxygen can ingress into the headspace of bottles as well as scalp hop aromas. Despite the assurances of keg suppliers that they neutralized interior surfaces, Grossman said his lab was still finding iron leaching in the beer. Sierra Nevada then developed its own process using a solution of hop-derived alpha acids to ensure those kegs were neutral. Thirty years ago, when consumers began trying Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for the first time, the beer's hoppiness was revolutionary. Today, Grossman said it's now on the mild end of the hoppy beer spectrum, but the brewery has worked to maintain market share. The company continues to launch new products designed to appeal to craft beer con- sumers who have no shortage of new beers to try. Grossman said it's less about competing against all the new breweries in the United States but rather competing for those beer drinkers by staying innovative. Sierra Nevada has invested in used spirits barrels to launch a barrel-aged program and, despite his own deep misgivings about it, Grossman said he let Brettanomyces into the brewery. He said at the urging of his son Brian Grossman (who is poised to manage the pri- vately held company with his sister Sierra after Ken Grossman retires) he developed an entirely separate system to carefully inseminate bottles of beer with a small dose of Brett for small run sour beers. "We need to go after the next gen- eration of beer drinkers," he said. —Andrew Adams © 2016 StaVin Inc. StaVın Inc, P.O.Box 1693, Sausalito,CA 94966 (415) 331-7849 f (415) 331-0516 stavin.com ® Eco-Friendly. Sustainable. Bio-Dynamic. Zero Impact. Every year, the list seems to grow longer of impressive, earth-saving adjectives that dress the most prudent of today's marketing strategies. And just how Green is StaVin? We recently installed a couple of high tech smoke filtration scrubbers atop our oak toasting facility, which was not required by law. And it did not come cheap. More importantly, our products are 80% less wasteful of resources than traditional barrel-aging methods. We save winemakers money and offer them more control over flavors. While keeping forests and wells fuller. Brewer Touts Research and Innovation to Winemakers Ken Grossman