BATCH 19- A NEW BEER COMING SOON

Coors’ Batch 19 taps into the past
By Dick Kreck

After much soul-searching and test marketing, AC Golden, the hefty-beer arm of MillerCoors, has released Batch 19, a throwback to the pre-Prohibition days of Coors.

“It’s a cool story,” said MillerCoors spokesman Tom Ryan. The recipe, the story goes, was found in the company’s basement archives. It was a beer the company made well before Prohibition came along to spoil the fun. Colorado went dry in 1916, and the nation followed suit in 1919, hence the “Batch 19” appellation.

(Warning: History lesson coming. In 1916, a Coloradan wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times​ that read, in part, “The state has passed a prohibition law which is illustrative of the way that we apt to tackle a problem in this country, namely, through a policy of fanaticism.”)

The boys at the pilot brewery in Golden began fooling around with the long-lost recipe and found old-time Coors lager sprightly, slightly hoppy and easy drinking, although not an exact match, thanks to the differences in modern ingredients and brewing techniques. Then began the long process of finding out if the public would tumble for it. It was test-marketed last year at the brewery and in Chicago, San Francisco/San Jose, Washington and Milwaukee.

It passed the tests. It’s now available in Denver-area liquor stores and on tap in 23 Colorado outlets. (See batch19.com for a complete list.) “We’ve had really strong response to Batch 19 in the Denver area,” said Ryan. “Denver is tops in the country in sales.” A nationwide release will follow soon.