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40 barrels. At the time, the brewery was producing over 15 million barrels of Coors, Coors Light and Herman Joseph. The Coors pilot brewery was the largest of the half-dozen microbreweries that existed in 1981.
    I had earlier been introduced to the pilot brewery’s head pilot brewer, Gil Ortega. One of the charges of the pilot brewery was product development. When homebrewers were invited to stop by and assess their experiments with “Killian’s Red Ale,” we jumped at the opportunity.
    When given creative choices, most brewers who call themselves masterbrewers will jump at the opportunity to develop new products. The spirit of beer passion was certainly evident in this tiny section of the Coors brewing factory.
    There were many test batches, trying different malt types with varying degrees of toasting. At first different ale yeasts were used, producing full-flavored red ale with hints of fruitiness and, unfortunately, explosively active warm-temperature fermentations frothing out the tops of the fermenters. The brewers and homebrewers seemed to enjoy these earlier prototypes. So did several of the Coors staff, but operationally the brewery had other priorities. The fermentations certainly needed to be tamer, and warm-temperature fermentations would require refitting with accommodating equipment. Aleyeast in a lager brewery made Coors nervous. And the looming marketing priority seemed to be “make us something that we can sell to our lager drinkers.”

    Dave Thomas and Chuck Hahn worked on the original versions of Coors’ Killian’s Irish Red Ale
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    GEORGE KILLIAN’S IRISH RED ALE FROM PELLFORTH
    Richly flavored with the subtle and romantic floral character of Santiam hops, this ale’s long kettle boil accents the toasted and caramel character of malt. The beer’s reddish glow is impassioned by the enthusiast who seeks original red ales. This recipe can be found in About the Recipes.
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    Killian’s Irish Red Ale, originally introduced to the public at the first Great American Beer Festival in 1982, was indeed “top fermented” with ale yeast, but likely lagered at cooler temperatures to soften its complexity. I recall it being very well received. Most beer enthusiasts at the time were utterly astonished that Coors would be so bold as to brew distinctive red ale with a notable degree of complexity.
    Time passed, and the company probably realized that if Killians were to survive, it had to increase its appeal to the average American beer drinker. In the following years, lager yeast replaced ale yeast and the complexity was reduced to accommodate the more popular tastes of the time.
    Killian’s has survived. It bears very little resemblance to the original 1982 recipe and it certainly has lost any connection, other than by name, to the red ale Peter Coors romanced in France. Yet it reminds me of the very beginnings of the emergence of microbrewed beer and of Coors’s early passion for interesting, flavorful, complex beers.
    Coors remains involved with the spirit of microbrewed beers. They produce Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale and Belgian-style Wheat Beer, and at the Sandlot (micro) Brewery at the Coors Stadium in downtown Denver they are brewing a wide variety of ales and lagers. There is also limited production of Barman, an all-malt German-style pilsener, originally brewed for the enjoyment of the Coors family and available at a half-dozen restaurants in the Denver-Boulder area in Colorado.
    The King Wants Homebrew
    M AY I PLEASE SPEAK with Mr. Charlie Papazian?” asked a deep-voiced gentleman with a European accent.
    â€œHello, this is Charlie, can I help you?” I replied, with absolutely no idea that this was the beginning of an adventure I would recall for the rest of my life. I vividly remember the moment and recall it over and over. It was in July of 1982.
    â€œHello Mr. Papazian, my name is George Charalambous and I work for Anheuser-Busch in St.