Barry goes to Sierra Nevada Beer Camp 2013.

Last week I had the honor of attending Sierra Nevada Beer Camp. Beer Camp is basically the “Golden Ticket” brewery tour to trump all other brewery tours! The brewery designed this program as a way to build & strengthen relationships with others in the beer community.  We were given access to all facets of their operation; Production, packaging, warehousing, research & development, pilot programs, cellars, sustainability programs, hop farm, hop and grain storage, yeast lab, quality assurance, sensory lab, brewpub, and more. On top of all that, we got to design, brew, and name our own batch of beer!

Sierra Nevada Brewing sits on 35 acres in the heart of Chico, CA.  On site you have everything you could imagine a large brewery needing and much more.  In the two days of camp we toured and worked in most facets of the brewery.  The highlight for me was working in the pilot brewery where we planned and brewed our own batch of beer! My team and I chose to brew an Imperial Oatmeal Porter with Coffee & Vanilla Beans. It was a pretty ambitious project for the pilot system which presented some challenges. Biggest of which was our mash getting stuck due to the amount of oats used!  (Our run off took over 4 hours!)

We were also treated to a very behind the scenes look at what it takes to mass produce a quality craft product. It is truly amazing to me the lengths that they go too to maintain incredible consistency and high quality.  Everything is constantly being tested & tasted!  The research and quality assurance labs were both very impressive.  There is also a sensory lab on site used to both detect defects in the beer as well as track trends in tastes and preferences.  

My fellow campers were a great group of beer industry folk from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, & Colorado.  In addition to several days of touring and working in the 2^nd largest craft brewery in the country, we managed to enjoy some great meals, stories, laughter and of course some killer beer!

Look for an announcement for our Beer Camp Beer Release sometime in Febuary!

I will have photos from my trip posted to our Facebook page soon!

Cheers!

~Barry