Sierra Nevada Founder Grossman Becomes a Billionaire

Sierra Nevada

If you happened to see Ken Grossman in a bar, you probably wouldn’t guess that he was a billionaire. Grossman is your everyday fellow who likes to wear jeans, flip flops, and trucker hats, not a posh billionaire. If you are not familiar with who Grossman is, he is the founder and owner of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and he is the worlds newest billionaire.

The company was started in 1979 and has a great success story. Grossman and his friend Paul Camusi began experimenting brewing beer in their home. After sharing their homebrew with some of their friends and families, the two realized they had a solid product on their hands. They slowly started to expand and share their craft beers with many consumers. Today they are one of the largest craft breweries in America, and have helped pioneer a new industry. When the company first started, there were only 40 breweries in the United States, today there are over 3,000.

Sierra Nevada is well known for their pale ales, and they are what helped get the brand so popular. In 2014, Sierra Nevada managed to sell one million barrels of beer which translates into about 331 million glass bottles of beer. The company is projected to continue to rise, as they ship more and more beer each year.

Ken Grossman is the third billionaire from the United States to make his fortune from beer. Jim Koch of Sam Adams/Boston Beer Co. and Dick Yuengling of D.G. Yuengling and Sons are the other billionaire brewers. Craft beer is certainly on the rise in America, and is often regarded as more premium beer compared to the beers produced by large companies like Anheuser-Busch InBev, for example. It seems like the larger breweries are catching on to this trend as many of them are purchasing up smaller craft breweries. Either way Grossman seems like a humble man as he never brewed beer for the money, he did it because it was his passion.

Photo from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

Written by Sebastian Hensiek

From Philadelphia, Sebastian is a fan of music, writing, art, and entertainment.