Adolph Coors: The German Immigrant Who Brought Us Banquet Beer

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Next is here February 29th through March 3rd on NFL network and streaming on NFL Plus. And we return to our American stories and up next a story from Pete Kors on Adolph Kors. Take it away Pete. Well so Adolph was born somewhere in the 1840s in a little place called Barman on Wippertal in Germany. Kind of an interesting story people say the C-O-O-R-S name is kind of unusual for a German name. His birth certificate he was signed in as Kors K-O-R-S which is very German and his father actually signed K-O-H-R-S and by the time his sister was born about eight or ten years later there was a Dutch magistrate who brought the double O from their language and it became C-O-O-R-S. His father was a flour miller and died when he was 10.

He had been a princess three times in order to survive. Once as a flour miller with his father's trade. Once as a printer book binder and those are three years in denture ships which as I understand in those days that meant you got room and board and that's about it and then the third one in brewing. We don't know the details of how or why he decided to leave Germany. He was always very proud of his German heritage but he stowed away on a ship landed in Baltimore had no papers had no money had no was able to work off his passage. As soon as he did he started working his way across the country and I guess it's a you know a typical great American story of coming to a land of opportunity and freedom but with no safety nets. I mean you came here you were on your own as so many pioneers did after this country became free from the monarchical rule of England and he worked on the Erie Barge Canal as we understand it he worked at a brewery in Naperville, Illinois. The Stenger Brewery became general manager of the brewery there left came further west ended up in Denver started a business importing cask wine from California and taking it by pack horse up to the mining towns that between Idaho Springs, Georgetown, Central City, Blackhawk and selling them and that's how he made a living and then I guess some of his German friends in Denver said well you know how to brew beer we could use a good brewery joined up with a financial partner I think he invested about ten thousand dollars in eleven acres in golden Colorado where he had found a source of spring water. The brewery was incorporated in 1873 three years before Colorado statehood. His partner lasted about eight years and decided the beer business wasn't going anywhere and Adolph turned into a sole proprietorship and he really had no formal education but he had he had a practical education and I think that was probably true for most immigrants at that time they came with their skills with their ability to do hard labor and it wasn't easy I'm sure it wasn't easy and as I look at some of the pictures that we have in the archives of the brewery workers sitting around the tanks and the kegs it's pretty obvious that they were a pretty rough crew you know he struggled but the business was growing in those days there were over 20 breweries in Colorado most of the mining towns had their own breweries would we would equate to craft breweries today boutique breweries if you hike throughout Colorado and pay attention a lot of these old abandoned mining towns and mining areas you'll find hops growing hops growing wild and he literally started by you know hauling beer by pack horse and then he began to buy properties and pre-prohibition he sold beer by having like craft breweries doing today by having saloons and bars we have a listing actually 19 I think the first year of taxes were 1915 and he did a full accounting of all his properties in Denver and in southern Colorado and around the region prohibition changed all that and brewers could no longer own retail liquor saloons and bars another interesting story about Adolf he needed to double the capacity of his brewery because they were doing quite well and growing and I believe it was 1884 I don't can't remember for sure the date he had just completed the new facilities a flood came down Clear Creek and wiped out his new brewery and he had borrowed money from the banks in Denver to build that and of course beer sales primarily grow in the summertime so here his brewery in the spring has wiped out all of his inventory went back to the banks and said look if you'll double down I'll rebuild and I'll pay it off and he did but he never borrowed another dime he decided that that was not a good way to proceed so really the company didn't ever borrow money until about the late 1880s we'd been growing and we needed the additional capital to to expand the brewery so people often ask why in the world in the 60s and 70s when the company was growing so fast were you only in 11 states and the simple answer is we were every dime that we had was invested back into the company because we had no debt we couldn't borrow money to grow any faster so that's in the mid 70s when competition from the east particularly Anheuser Bush came more west we began to expand our territory and people used to say it had something to do with quality and to a certain degree it did in 11 states we could have pretty good control of quality but the real reason is we needed to in order to become a competitor with the big guys and keep them from burying us we expanded territory the rest I guess as they say is history a couple of funny stories after prohibition back in those days a banquet was a big deal you didn't have fast foods restaurants you didn't have people on there you know going out to clubs and I mean if you had a banquet that was a big deal and my grandfather said to the we had no marketing department per se in those days and said well I think we ought to well this is this is a beer that's good enough for a banquet and so that's where banquet came from and the other other funny story you know now we have the Coors Banquet has the stubby bottles and it's a it's a retro it goes back to the early days after prohibition when we had stubby bottles and I asked my uncle one time I don't know if this is a true story or not I asked my uncle one time why did we why did we go to Longnecks he said well he said the cowboys when they go dancing would like to would put their bottles in the back pocket so they could dance and the beer would slosh out and so that's how Longnecks got started now I don't know if that's true accurate or not but that's that's why everybody went everybody went to Longnecks and stuff everybody had pretty much had stubbies back in the early days after prohibition so now we've gone back to the I guess they put their beers down when they go dance I don't know but anyway and a special thanks to Monty and to Alex for the storytelling and putting that story together so beautifully and a special thanks to Pete Coors and what a story he had to tell about Adolf Coors born in Germany he became an apprentice and even talked about indentureships this is back when young people would work for room and board and that was it and my goodness by the time I got young people would work for room and board and that was it and my goodness by 1873 having come to America moved all the way out to the west and learned not by formal education but by practical education that is experience forged and formed a company that was incorporated in 1873 three years before Colorado was even a state and all these years later this family business well it's still a family business and that doesn't happen often the story of Adolf Coors and Coors Brewing Company as told by Pete Coors here on Our American Stories. 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