The Coors Brewing Company is an American brewery and beer company based in Golden, Colorado. Founded in 1873 by Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler, it is a subsidiary of Molson Coors.[1] The first Coors brewery in Golden is the largest single site brewery operating in the world.[2]
History
Founding
In 1873, German immigrants Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler from Prussia immigrated to the United States and established a brewery in what was then Golden City, Colorado Territory (now Golden, Colorado), after buying a recipe for a Pilsner-style beer from a Czech immigrant, William Silhan.[3] Coors invested $2,000 in the operation, and Schueler invested $18,000. In 1880, Coors bought out his partner and became the sole owner of the brewery.[4]. Following the buyout, the firm was renamed the Adolph Coors Golden Brewery. During this era, Coors adopted a conservative growth strategy that prioritized product quality over aggressive expansion, famously spending only about $0.70 per barrel on advertising, which was only a fraction of the $3.00 per barrel spent by national "shipping" brewers like Anheuser-Busch[5]. This approach was tied to the specific heritage of the brewery's flagship pilsner. Coors' flagship beer is usually described as Czech or Pilsner-style— the same family of pale lagers that made Plzeň famous after Josef Groll’s 1842 brew, the root of what became Pilsner Urquell. William Silhan (a brewmaster and associate of William Coors)’s exact path in Bohemia isn’t spelled out in the familiar English references, so the flagship Golden recipe is best thought of as part of that tradition rather than as a documented chapter of the Plzeň brewery’s payroll.[6]. Coors maintained that the beer’s quality, derived from this Bohemian lineage and the "soft" alpine water of Clear Creek, necessitated a policy of local refrigeration rather than the pasteurization used by national brands[7].
By the turn of the century, the brewery had become the largest in the state[8], and in 1913, it was formally incorporated as the Adolph Coors Brewing and Manufacturing Company[9]. The company also began a trend of vertical integration and early environmentalism; in 1885, the brewery established a bottle-return program, paying 45 cents for every dozen empty quart bottles returned to the facility[10]. This period of industrialization saw the brewery transition from a small-scale partnership into a massive complex that included its own bottling plant and a dedicated rail spur.
Prohibition
The Coors Brewing Company managed to survive Prohibition relatively intact. Years before the Volstead Act went into effect nationwide, Adolph Coors established the Adolph Coors Brewing and Manufacturing Company, which included Herold Porcelain and other ventures, with sons Adolph Jr., Grover and Herman. The brewery itself was converted into a malted milk and near beer production facility. Coors sold much of the malted milk to the Mars candy company to produce sweets. Manna, the company's non-alcoholic beer replacement, was a near-beer similar to current non-alcoholic beverages. However, Coors and his sons relied heavily on the porcelain company and a cement and real estate company to keep the Coors Brewing Company afloat. By 1933, after the end of Prohibition, the Coors brewery was one of only a handful of breweries that had survived.[11]
All of the non-brewery assets of the Adolph Coors Company were spun off between 1989 and 1992. The descendant of the original Herold Porcelain ceramics business continues to operate as CoorsTek.[12]
Products
For much of its first 100 years of existence, Coors beer was marketed solely in the American West.[13][14][15] While California and Texas were part of the 11-state distribution area, Washington and Montana were not added until 1976[13][16] (Oregon did not approve sales in grocery stores until 1985).[17][18]
Mergers
On July 22, 2004, the Adolph Coors Company, the holding company that owned Coors Brewing, announced it would be merging with Canadian brewing company Molson, Inc. The merger was completed February 9, 2005, with the merged company being named Molson Coors Brewing Company.[28] Coors Brewing Company became a subsidiary of the new company. Due to the merger, Molson Coors was rated the third largest producer of beer in the United States, and the second largest brewer in the United Kingdom.[29]
Brands
Coors is responsible for promoting and distributing several alcoholic beverage brands. The most notable of those brands are Coors Banquet, Coors Light, Blue Moon, Keystone, and Miller.[30]
Controversies
Labor problems
In April 1977, the brewery workers union at Coors, representing 1,472 employees, went on strike. The brewery kept operating with supervisors and 250 to 300 union members, including one union executive board member who ignored the strike. Soon after, Coors announced that it would hire replacements for the striking workers.[31] About 700 workers quit the picket line to go back to work, and Coors replaced the remaining 500 workers, keeping the beer production process uninterrupted.[32] In December 1978, the workers at Coors voted by greater than a two-to-one ratio to decertify the union, ending 44 years of union representation at Coors. Because the strike was more than a year old, striking workers could not vote in the election.[33]
Labor unions organized a boycott to punish Coors for its labor practices.[34] One tactic employed by the unions was a push for states to pass laws banning the sale of unpasteurized canned and bottled beer.
In popular culture
The 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit centers on an illegal shipment of Coors from Texas to Georgia.[49]
In 2014, Coors (as MillerCoors) entered a contract with FX Networks, the producer of TV shows such as It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.[50] Since season six of the show all beer in Paddy's Pub is Coors and the bar has Coors signs and logos scattered throughout it.
See also
- Coors Light
- Molson Coors Beverage Company
Bibliography
- Baum, Dan. Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. ISBN 0-688-15448-4
- Brantley, Allyson P. Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism (University of North Carolina Press, 2021).
External links
References
- Molson announces $6B US merger deal with Coors CBC, July 22, 2004, retrieved October 10, 2020^
- Garrett Oliver. The Oxford Companion to Beer Oxford University Press, September 9, 2011^
- Beer Here! A Local History of Brewing at History Colorado