Today would have been longtime Sierra Nevada employee Steve Harrison’s 74th birthday. Unfortunately, Steve passed away in August of 2007. He was Sierra Nevada employee number one, and was responsible for a lot of their early success. I first got to know Steve in the mid-1990s when I was the chain beer buyer at BevMo. He was a terrific person and universally respected and beloved in the industry. Sierra Nevada had to hire two or three people to take over his responsibilities. Join me in raising a glass of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale to Steve’s memory today. Here’s to you, Steve.
The last time I saw Steve was at a CSBA meeting in San Diego in 2007, though we talked on the phone a few more times after that because he’d asked me to do some freelance work for him shortly after that CSBA meeting. You can almost make him out in the photo below. He’s in the middle, toward the back, in a blue shirt. He’s in between Tom McCormick (in a green shirt) and a man in a black shirt raising his glass below the giant boulder in the background.
CSBA Meeting at Stone Brewing in San Diego in 2007.
A very young Steve, at right, with Michael Jackson and Lou. (Photo by Tom Dalldorf, from the Celebrator Beer News.)
The Steve Harrison Memorial Arch, which is at the northern entrance to the Steve Harrison Bike Path, which is located not very far from the brewery in Chico. (The photo was taken in 2010 by Jack Peters, and sent to me by Miles Jordan. Thank you, gentlemen.)
“Karl Ockert, BridgePort’s original brewmaster, is seen in the center of this photograph from 1985 when BridgePort was still known as Columbia River Brewery. Flanking him are other figures from Portland’s craft brewery vanguard. From left, Steve Harrison, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.; Fred Eckhardt, beer columnist; Fred Bowman, Portland Brewing Co.; Paul Shipman, Independent Brewing Co.; Karl Ockert, Columbia River Brewery; Tom Baune, Hart Brewing Co.; Jim Temple, General Brewing Co.; Mike McMenamin, McMenamins; and Kurt Widmer, Widmer Brewing Co.” [From the Multnomah County Library.]
And this oddity is an ad for the Italian Cottage Restaurant in Chico, inexplicably featuring Steve that ran, once as far as I can tell, in the Enterprise Record, also of Chico.
