Adolph Coors

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Adolph Coors (February 4, 1847 – June 5, 1929) was a brewer who started the Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colorado in 1873.

Adolph was the son of Joseph Kuhrs (c1820-1862) and Helena Hein (c1820-1862), and was born in Barmen in Rhenish Prussia on February 4, 1847. He was apprenticed at age thirteen to the book and stationery store of Andrea & Company in nearby Ruhrort from November of 1860 until June of 1862. The Kuhrs family moved to Dortmund, Westphalia, where Adolph was educated. His mother died on April 2, 1862. In July of 1862, Adolph was apprenticed for a three year period at a brewery owned by Henry Wenker in Dortmund. He was charged a fee for his apprenticeship, so he worked as a bookkeeper to pay for his apprenticeship. His father died on November 24, 1862. Orphaned, Adolph completed his apprenticeship and continued to work as a paid employee at the Wenker Brewery until May of 1867. He then worked at breweries in Kassel, Berlin, and Uelzen in Germany. Early in 1868, he immigrated to the United States. He sailed from Hamburg to New York City and then moved to Chicago arriving on May 30, 1868. His name was changed from "Kuhrs" to "Coors". He worked in the spring as a laborer, and during the summer he worked as a brewer. In the fall and winter he worked as a fireman, loading coal into the firebox of a steam engine. In the spring and summer of 1869 he worked as an apprentice bricklayer and a stone cutter. He became foreman of John Stenger's brewery on August 11, 1869, in Naperville, Illinois, about 35 miles west of Chicago. He resigned from Stenger's brewery on January 22, 1872, and arrived in Denver in April. He worked in Denver as a gardener for a month, then on May 1, 1872 he purchased a partnership in the bottling firm of John Staderman. In the same year he bought and assumed control of the entire business. An advertisement in Corbett, Hoye & Company's Directory of the City of Denver for 1873 on page 242 showed Adolph Coors as a dealer in "bottled beer, ale, porter and cider, imported and domestic wines, and seltzer water." His place of business was located in the Tappan Block on Holladay (now Market) Street between E and F Streets (now 14th and 15th). The same directory shows that Coors lived on Curtis Street between IC and L (20th and 21st) Streets.

[edit] Golden Brewery

On November 14, 1873, Coors and the Denver confectioner Jacob Schueler purchased the abandoned Golden City Tannery and converted it to the Golden Brewery. By February of 1874 they were producing beer for sale. In 1880 Coors purchased Schueler's interest, and the brewery remains majority family-owned as of 2006. When Prohibition was passed in Colorado in 1914, he converted his brewery to make malted milk. The company also manufactured porcelain and ceramic products made from clay mined in Golden. The Coors Porcelain division has since split off, and is now known as CoorsTek.