The biggest thing from the back end of the trip was the visit to Sierra Nevada Brewing Company’s East Coast production facility, located just outside of Asheville in Mills River, NC. It’s right next to the Asheville airport, but given how much green land SN bought up (it’s about a quarter- to half-mile drive through forest to get from the front gate to the brewery.

You’ll notice throughout the parking lot there are several “trees” made out of solar panels, which help provide power for the facility.

The brewery nails a naturalist-meets-Willy-Wonka aesthetic, and as colleague described it to me, the place was designed for brewery tours. Indeed, they hold numerous tours of varying content and levels of detail each week. And if you want to go at your own pace, there is a several hundred foot-long corridor with expansive top-down views of various parts of the production process, an in-depth description of the production process, and many displays highlighting the history of beer in general and Sierra Nevada specifically.

Bottles from throughout Sierra Nevada’s history.

There are spacious sit-down spaces both inside at their tasting bar/pub AND outside behind the brewery, as well as a high-gravity beer bar just upstairs from the main tasting bar.

The Sierra Nevada brings together just about every SN beer you can think of.

Without a doubt, the brewery is absolutely beautiful. I’ve seen more than a few self-guided brewery tours in my time (they are a requirement before drinking in a brewery in New Jersey). This one blows EVERY ONE away. It helps that Sierra Nevada’s a big boy in the craft world, but they nailed the brewery experience in every way at the Mills River brewery.