began with Adolph Kuhrs, who was born in 1847 in the Rhine Province of Prussia. From 1862 through 1867 Kuhrs worked at several different breweries in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1868. An enterprising man, he worked various jobs in Illinois before landing in Denver in 1872. By that time, Kuhrs had become Coors. He was looking to start a brewery, but did not have the financial wherewithal and so took on a partner named Jacob Schueler. The name of the brewery from 1873 until 1880 was the Schueler & Coors Golden Brewery. After Coors bought out Schueler’s interest in 1880, the brewery was known as Adolph Coors Golden Brewery. Over the years, the company name changed to different iterations of Adolph Coors Company and by 1989 became the Coors Brewing Company. During the Prohibition years in Colorado (1916–1933; Colorado started early), Coors stayed in business by making near beer (nonalcoholic beer) and malted milk. See near beer, prohibition. The majority of Coors malted milk was sold to Mars Candy Company. Coors also had income from a porcelain plant making pottery and dishwares. These nonbeer ventures provided marginal profit at best and more than once put the company on the brink of financial ruin. But the company held on, and after Prohibition Coors was one of a few breweries that were left largely intact and ready to reopen. Indeed, Coors reopened for business at 12:00 a.m. on April 7, 1933, the precise minute when the Volstead Act was repealed, ending Prohibition. With the playing field essentially cleared, business for Coors quickly ramped up to the point where the brewery was selling every ounce of beer it could brew. Growth did not slow substantially until the 1970s, when intense competition and a boycott by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, a trade union center, joined by other groups, effectively hindered the brewery’s growth and profitability. At that point Coors beer was sold mainly in the western United States and so the company began a plan to increase distribution throughout the United States, a goal that was accomplished by 1991, with Indiana being the last state to approve sales of Coors beer. In 1992 all nonbrewing assets were spun off, including Coors Ceramics Company (formerly known as the Coors Porcelain Company), Golden Aluminum Company, and Graphic Packaging Group and held under ACX Technologies. By 2000 most of the nonbrewing enterprises were sold off or merged with other companies, except for Coors Ceramics, which became the sole holding of CoorsTek after ACX Technologies was dissolved. In addition to the Golden Brewery, a second location was added in 1990 when a brewery in Memphis was purchased from the Stroh Brewing Company. The Coors Memphis Brewery operated for 13 years before closing in 2003. In 1987 a beer-packaging facility was built in Elkton, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. This site was converted to a brewery in 2007. Internationally, Coors purchased the malting and brewing assets of Bass Brewers Ltd from InBev in 2002 and renamed it Coors Brewers Limited. In 2005 Coors merged with the Molson Brewing Company in Canada to form the Molson Coors Brewing Company, the fifth largest brewer in the world, with dual headquarters in Montreal, Canada, and Denver, Colorado. In 2008 Molson Coors Brewing Company created a joint venture in the US market with SABMiller called MillerCoors for improved scales of economy. Headquarters for MillerCoors are located in Chicago, Illinois. As of 2010 Molson Coors operated breweries in Canada (all of the former Molson breweries), the United States (all of the MillerCoors joint venture breweries), and the UK (all of the Coors Brewers Limited breweries). See inbev, sabmiller.

Throughout its history, Coors has used innovative technologies to improve the quality of its beers. In 1959 Coors developed the first two-piece aluminum can for beverages. Also in 1959, Coors moved away from pasteurization and implemented sterile filtration to stabilize their beer. Coors also started a malting barley research station, which is now located in Burley, Idaho, where new and improved malting varieties are developed. Coors products marketed throughout the years are numerous. However, during the first 100 years of operation, the main product was simply Coors banquet beer, with an Export beer and a Bock beer made in minor quantities until the 1940s. Coors Light was introduced in 1978 and within 25 years became one of the top three beer brands in the United States. In 1994 Coors produced the first flavored malt beverage (widely referred to as “malternatives”) under the name Zima. Other beers made by Molson Coors with significant market share include, in the US market, the Blue Moon family of brands, Killian’s Red, and the Keystone family of brands; in the Canadian market, the Molson family of brands, the Rickard’s family of brands, and Coors Light; and in the UK market Carling, Coors Light, and Grolsch. Other smaller brands around the world include Winterfest, Coors NA, Caffrey’s, Cobra, Worthington, and Creemore Springs.

The vast majority of the company’s beers are standard American-style lagers made from barley malt and corn adjunct. The brewery at Golden, Colorado, which features a singularly beautiful copper brewhouse, is the largest single site brewery site in the world, with the capacity to produce approximately 20 million barrels of beer per year.