"Founders Freddy Bensch and Kevin McNerney were roommates at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where they also worked part-time cleaning kegs at a local brewery.
Bensch named the brewery after kayaking down Sweetwater Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee River, in Georgia's Sweetwater Creek State Park located a few miles west of the brewery. The brewery also adopted the official motto ""Don't Float the Mainstream"" as a tribute to its namesake.