Coors Banquet clone failure - thoughts??

[day_trippr]

That what breakers like Cellar Science and Mangrove Jack (and Propagation Labs, presumably) are for...

Cheers!

 

[Pennine]

Oh, yes. I’ve used that very yeast a couple of times, but I thought they were only releasing these days in brewery pitch sizes. It seems a bit “coincidental” that Propagation Labs is located within the shadow (so to speak) of a certain Colorado-based brewing company in Golden, CO.

Yeah I chatted with them a few years ago and that was hinted at but who knows. I used to get it from Tom's my LHBS which is right down the street from Propagate but that was a few years back now. They may have stopped offering the homebrew packs, which would be unfortunate.

 

[Broothru]

That what breakers like Cellar Science and Mangrove Jack (and Propagation Labs, presumably) are for...

Cheers!

True, but in the case specifically of Coors, known for their air tight contract with suppliers and closely guarded ‘secret’ formulations and ingredients, I would think that Coors would threaten swift legal action against anyone infringing on any proprietary information.

At least in the “old days”, Coors bought all the seed grain for their malt (Moravian barley?), farmed it out to only certain growers who would only sell their entire crop to Coors, in secret contracts with very restrictive non-disclosure codicil. I’d imagine they’d also be protective of their yeast trademarks.

 

[day_trippr]

"their yeast trademarks"

Not sure yeast can be protected in such a manner, but if popular opinion is true it's not their yeast at all. And if they were to take someone to court for using Andechs yeast that would publically blow their secret wide open...

Cheers!

 

[Broothru]

"their yeast trademarks"

Not sure yeast can be protected in such a manner, but if popular opinion is true it's not their yeast at all. And if they were to take someone to court for using Andechs yeast that would publically blow their secret wide open...

Cheers!

Not so much the actual use of Andechs in fermenting their beers, but the sharing (revealing) of the fact that it is the ingredient Coors uses. Of course Coors couldn’t sue a third party for using Andechs, but they could argue in court that a vendor or supplier had revealed a trade secret. {ex.: CocaCola or Col. Sanders’ “secret” recipes as trademarked formulations). Any commercial entity doing business with a mega-brand would easily be dissuaded by the threat of litigation.

 

[mac_1103]

You can't trademark a secret (although you could I suppose trademark a phrase like "The Colonel's secret recipe"). When you protect some bit of intellectual property as a trade secret, it's incumbent upon you to keep it secret. So Coors could sue their yeast supplier for revealing what yeast strain they use if they put language in the contract that prohibits that. But they can't sue just anybody. And if some random guy on the internet says that he somehow got his hands on a trub dump from Golden, CO and cultured the Andechs strain from it, they're not going to do a damned thing because it is not in their interest to turn an unsubstantiated claim into a fact.

 

[WouldBeBrewmaster]

Use 2105-PC Rocky Mountain if you can find it 2035 is supposed to be released later this year as well. Failing that 2007 or WLP840. Buy multiple packs or make a big starter.

All the dry lager yeasts are European and too clean. That’s fine in a Pilsner or Helles which has more malt or hop character. In an American lager minor flaws are part of the charm and add SOME flavor to an otherwise bland and inoffensive beer. If you must use dry, use Novalager.

 

[Broothru]

You can't trademark a secret (although you could I suppose trademark a phrase like "The Colonel's secret recipe"). When you protect some bit of intellectual property as a trade secret, it's incumbent upon you to keep it secret. So Coors could sue their yeast supplier for revealing what yeast strain they use if they put language in the contract that prohibits that. But they can't sue just anybody. And if some random guy on the internet says that he somehow got his hands on a trub dump from Golden, CO and cultured the Andechs strain from it, they're not going to do a damned thing because it is not in their interest to turn an unsubstantiated claim into a fact.

Exactly what I was trying to say.

 

[duelerx]

Use 2105-PC Rocky Mountain if you can find it 2035 is supposed to be released later this year as well. Failing that 2007 or WLP840. Buy multiple packs or make a big starter.

All the dry lager yeasts are European and too clean. That’s fine in a Pilsner or Helles which has more malt or hop character. In an American lager minor flaws are part of the charm and add SOME flavor to an otherwise bland and inoffensive beer. If you must use dry, use Novalager.

How would you use Nova for this beer?

 

[Mack]

I know there are "proper" yeast options, and the "correct" hop choices, but my most recent iteration of this has turned out damned near perfect.....

8 lbs 2-Row
1 lb Carapils
½ lb Flaked rice

½ oz Hallertau @ 60
½ oz Hallertau @ 5

34/70 yeast - fermented under pressure @ 13 PSI for 2 weeks. Ambient 65°F, cold crashed / fined with gelatin / keg xfer, then "lagered" 2 weeks at 36°F.

The wife's sample taste, her immediate response: "Coors?"

I'm calling it a win and not gonna mess with this recipe anymore.

 

[bwible]

Use 2105-PC Rocky Mountain if you can find it 2035 is supposed to be released later this year as well. Failing that 2007 or WLP840. Buy multiple packs or make a big starter.

All the dry lager yeasts are European and too clean. That’s fine in a Pilsner or Helles which has more malt or hop character. In an American lager minor flaws are part of the charm and add SOME flavor to an otherwise bland and inoffensive beer. If you must use dry, use Novalager.

It looks like Wyeast last released the 2105-PC in the winter of 2020. Thats not one we see a whole lot. They’ve released 2035-PC American Lager (formerly New Ulm), 2000-PC Budvar Lager, 2272-PC North American Lager (Schmidts?), and 2001-PC Pilsner Urqell H-Strain each a couple times

 

[bwible]

I also know Miller has a proprietary hop product that does not skunk. Miller High Life comes in clear bottles and I can’t recall ever having a skunky High Life. If one giant macro has that, I can’t imagine others don’t too.

 

[BrewZer]

If you distill this logic, your reason for homebrewing comes down to getting a particular style of beer cheaper than retail? I thought it was the journey?

Homebrewing On $5 A Day

 

[Yooper]

I also know Miller has a proprietary hop product that does not skunk. Miller High Life comes in clear bottles and I can’t recall ever having a skunky High Life. If one giant macro has that, I can’t imagine others don’t too.

Like Corona. They also use a hop extract.

 

[mashdar]

Basically all of the clear and green bottles use non-skunking extracts these days.

 

[Bramling Cross]

I also know Miller has a proprietary hop product that does not skunk. Miller High Life comes in clear bottles and I can’t recall ever having a skunky High Life. If one giant macro has that, I can’t imagine others don’t too.

Frankly, I think this is the core of the issue. Once you invest in the necessary brewery capital (refrigeration/oxygen control/proper yeast handling) to brew fizzy yellow swill, there's really not much to N. American mass market lager brewing, besides marketing. It all sorta boils down to which adjunct package you want to use (corn, wheat, rice), their proportions, and the quantity of the overall adjunct package.

In my opinion, people stress way too much about lager yeast. It all tastes like lager yeast because it's bred to taste like lager yeast--except S-23, that stuff is vile.

While I have extensive experience with brewing fizzy yellow swill, all of my efforts have gone into making fizzy yellow swill taste good while hitting the macro-brewers' time constraints. I'm not terribly useful when it comes to matching the hops profile of fizzy domestic swill, but it's gotta be extract-based because extract is a far, far, far, more reliable ingredient when brewing at the industrial scale, where repeatability matters most.

One of the things that I hate the most about my brewery is its reliance upon foreign hops (everyone on the Continent gets the pick of the litter before my garbage hops, that nobody else wants to buy, are designated for export), so my lagers vary wildly based upon just how crappy this year's most unloved hops tend to be. If you're a big industrial brewer, you can't afford to have year-to-year variety expressed in your beers. You need something that you can rely upon. That means extract.

I wouldn't beat yourself up about the hops profile in what sounds like an otherwise brilliant Coors clone. Even if you do manage to get a dead ringer this year, the variations in next year's hop crop will invalidate your perfect recipe next year.

Control what you can control and realize that you can't control next year's hop harvest. That leaves you with three options:

1) Pick a highly reliable hop and decide that it will be the flavor of your Coors clone. Magnum would be my suggestion. It's a very reliable, steady-state hop. Maybe goose it with a bit of something more flavorful? Or, just use Clusters. At some point in Coors' history they used Clusters, likely they exclusively used Clusters. Call your beer "Original 1920s Coors," or some other BS.

2) Do the extract thing and damn the financials at the homebrew level. The hazy crowd is already doing this. If Coors is your passion project, there's no shame in going this route and nobody has a right to criticize you or your brewery. The entire point of homebrewing is brewing what you want to drink. If what you want to drink is Coors, that ain't nobody's business but yours. Plunk down a bunch of money on extract hops and figure out a blend that you like, no matter the expense. It ain't nobody's business but yours.

3) Realize that cloning is a fool's errand and think about what you like about Coors, emphasize what you like to the best of your abilities, and just learn to live with the fact that your homage to Coors will never be exactly perfect...but is still pretty damned good beer. This is how I run my brewery. You'll go insane trying to clone something. It's far better to accept that your brewery will always taste like your brewery. You might as well embrace that and make the best possible Coors clone that you're able to make on your rig. Never give up, don't stop tinkering with it, but get good with the idea that you'll never score a dead ringer. There's nothing wrong with that, that's just how brewing works. Your beer will always taste like your beer, and Coors' beer will always taste like Coors. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that.

For what it's worth, that's how I see it. I hope you found this useful.

 

[BrewZer]

View attachment 876620

Coors has hops in it?

At some point in Coors' history they used Clusters, likely they exclusively used Clusters.

"Cluster" is exactly the term I'd use...

 

[BrewZer]

Basically all of the clear and green bottles use non-skunking extracts these days.

I still don't trust Heineken in the green glass... I've been skunked once too often.

 

[mashdar]

I still don't trust Heineken in the green glass... I've been skunked once too often.

You're right - I wonder if that's a purity thing, or they're giving Americans what they want. I heard someone on a podcast say they sometimes add skunk flavor to NA lager.