SweetWater Brewing Company, one of the largest craft breweries in the Southeast, is an award-winning brewery known for its stash of heady brews including the original 420 Extra Pale Ale. Sweetwater’s craft beers are available coast to coast. Inspired by the outdoors, SweetWater is a passionate advocate for healthy waterways and conservation initiatives.
don’t float the mainstream.
SweetWater’s roots began back in Colorado in the very early 90’s while Freddy Bensch and Kevin McNerney were roommates going to school together at Colorado University, Boulder. During their time out west, they realized they had more of a hankering for beer than books. Their first step into the profession was washing kegs on the loading docks of a local brewery. They fell in love with the beer industry and were off to study fermentation science at the American Brewer’s Guild. After that, the summer of 1996 came and brought the Olympics to Atlanta, as well as west coast style brewing to the west side of Atlanta.
1997
We opened our doors February 17th, which marked the official beginning of SweetWater Brewery, and a new style of brewing and selling beer on the west side of ATL.
2004
We bought our current location in Midtown Atlanta, a 25,000 square foot facility
2005
Our very first 420 Fest celebration, with tunes, brews and buds.
2012
A $19 million dollar expansion project was started, quintupling SweetWater’s capacity for production. We also bought the former DHL warehouse next door and connected the buildings with a large packaging corridor in between.
2016
We completed another expansion project- The Woodlands, to add more warehouse space for our conditioning beer as well as relocated the repack line and POS warehouse to our property. Most excitingly, we added another tasting room and barrel aging production space with the ability to explore mixed fermentations.
2019
AH-HA Moment
We expanded and revitalized our taproom. Instead of having 8 beers, we now have 24 unique beers and 48 taps, as well as a full functioning kitchen!
we live for the outdoors, and we’re going to protect it.
Protecting our waterways is a cause really close to our hearts, because you can’t make good beer without good water. For more than a decade we’ve been teaming up with Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance to try to do our part to help raise funds and awareness for the great work they do.
we’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time!
Every year we gather up our closest friends for a weekend of killer tunes, cold brews, crafters from across the country and more to celebrate the SweetWater way of life.
we care about local communities.
SweetWater sponsors several programs to give back to our local Atlanta community.
