Talk:William Coors

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[edit] Wait a Minute!

This "biography" of Bill Coors is worse than mediocre! A reader who has never heard of him could easily draw the false conclusion that he is a white supremacist leader, and little else. I worked for Coors Brewing Co. and its affiliates for a decade when Bill was the chairman, and I have shaken hands with him. While I cannot say I know him, I have seen him many times and heard his speeches. He is no racist. The web site in the reference is hardly unbiased.

The incident cited was an invited speech Bill Coors made to Denver-area minority business leaders in 1984. They were Americans, not Mexicans or Africans. His poor choice of words was not well received by the audience, and it was reported the next day in the Denver newspapers. He was contrite, and attempted to make amends in time. His speech was largely ad-lib, and he learned the hard way the need for a scripted speech before certain audiences. The citation in this biography is way out of context. Dan Baum's book, Citizen Coors, also makes a big deal of The Speech, but Baum is also far from unbiased. His disdain for the Coors family and their companies is abundantly clear.

So, what is Bill Coors noted for, and why should anyone give a rat's ***? At least three major points should be noted in a Bill Coors biography, and his relatives (especially brother Joe and Joe's sons) deserve some of the credit -- cold-filtered beer, aluminum beverage cans, and staying solvent in a turbulent industry.

First, Bill & family noticed the heat of pasteurization adversely affected the flavor of beer in the 1950s. They started using filters to remove microorganisms from cold beer circa 1959 as an alternative to pasteurization, but kept low-key about it. They did not use it as a marketing tool. Miller, in contrast, did make a big deal about their cold-filtered Miller Genuine Draft in the 1990s. Engineering was always Coors' strong point, not marketing.

Second, Bill noticed the abundance of steel beer cans littering parks and beaches in the 1950s, and the desire of many politicians to punish the beverage producers for it. He developed the idea for recyclable aluminum cans, made at the brewery, and ran with it, in spite of opposition from his father (then-chairman Adolph II) and the steel can industry. Coors began making extruded (later drawn & ironed) 7-oz aluminum cans near its brewery in 1959, and phased out steel cans completely by 1971. The idea was nothing short of revolutionary, it gave the aluminum industry a big shot in the arm, and launched the most successful recycling program ever.^[1]

Third, as long-time chairman of Coors Brewing Company, Bill's leadership kept it solvent and independent during an era of consolidation and bankruptcy in the brewing industry. Coors survived and even was consistently profitable against fierce competition from Anheuser-Busch, Phillip Morris-owned Miller, imports, microbreweries, organized labor, political activists, politicians and government bureaucrats. Whatever became of competitors Stroh's, Schlitz, Old Milwaukee, Pabst, Olympia, Hamms, Heilemann's Old Style, Henry Weinhard's, Iron City, Primo, Rainier and many others? Most of them are brewed under contract by another brewery, and some have disappeared entirely. Does anyone remember Walters beer from Pueblo, CO? Nope, I didn't think so!

Bill Coors deserves a much better article than the shallow nonsense currently in Wikipedia.His Manliness (talk) 18:32, 4 January 2008 (UTC)