Most sours are brewed the traditional way, with wooden barrels and lots of time. But Wild Little Thing is made using a technique called accelerated “kettle souring.” First, we make wort (unfermented beer) without any hops. Then we boil it, cool it and add lactobacillus, the same friendly bacteria you know from yogurt or sauerkraut. Lactobacillus turns sugar into lactic acid. Voila! Now we’re sour. We blend this special wort (roughly 10%) back into Wild Little Thing’s total wort to achieve its tartness.

Ken Grossman started Sierra Nevada with a hand-built brewhouse and the odds stacked against him. In 1980, that patchwork of pipes, pumps and tanks began making beers that forever changed the course of American craft brewing. Ken's passion for good beer began when a friend showed him the basics of homebrewing. He began brewing five-gallon batches of beer on his own and soon became a proficient homebrewer. In 1976, Ken opened his own store, The Home Brew Shop, and, soon after, began building a small brewery in the town of Chico, California. His goal: to brew exceptional ales and lagers. An avid backpacker, Ken named the new company for his favorite hiking grounds—the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Finally, on November 15, 1980, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. brewed the first batch of what would soon become a landmark in American craft brewing: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Today, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is considered one of the premier craft breweries in the United States.