Times-News: Sierra Nevada taps dream water source for its Mills River brewery

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Gary Glancy of the Hendersonville Times-News has been keeping tabs on the development of craft brewer Sierra Nevada’s construction of its new East Coast brewery in Mills River down in Henderson County. Here’s a relevant bit about Sierra Nevada’s water source:

According to Stan Cooper, who will co-manage the Mills River plant, the well will generate about 160 gallons of water per minute, which is roughly 50 gallons a minute more than Sierra Nevada needs for the brewing process.

“It’s an old aquifer — the (well) driller calls it a glacier aquifer,” Cooper said during a recent interview. “He hit a vein that has big cobblestones in it, and to find these aquifer cobblestones underground is pretty rare, but when you hit one it’s pretty phenomenal.”

Water quality was one of the critical factors in the company’s choice of WNC from about 200 sites across the eastern U.S. The brewery had been in discussions with the Asheville Water System to service the Mills River site, Cooper said, but it also learned there was some high-quality water to be found in aquifers throughout the region — primarily around Black Mountain — “So we thought, ‘What the heck? Let’s try it.’ ”

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

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