Maybe it was my younger pallet, but "original Coors" was a fuller bodied beer. I'v brewed a few Czech style lagers and would like to find a good recipe for original Coors .
Any experts want to guess what are the likely hops used in the brewery back in the 70's and your best guess on a lager yeast that would be close?
By 'original Coors', I assume you mean from the 1970s, as opposed to the 1870s (when the brewery was founded)? Even going back only forty years, that's a long time to be guessing at these things, without some sort of documentation.
For hops, we can rule out anything newer than the 1960s - we know, for example, that when Cascade was first introduced in 1973, the only brewery that was willing to use them was New Albion, because all the others were using established strains (this is based on
Jack MacAulliffe's own recollections on the subject, and there's little reason to think he was wrong). So, probably one of the noble German hops, at least by ancestry, though some of the early US strains such as Crystal are a possibility. I never knew the Coors of that era, myself, but if I had to guess it would be some Hallertau derivative.
The yeast is likely to be even more elusive; assuming it hasn't been lost to history entirely, it is probable that the only source for that strain would be Coors themselves, and they are notoriously uncooperative. Commercial breweries are generally very protective of their in-house yeasts, and the ones which are used by homebrewers are generally far removed from those the Big Boys play with. Ironically, the closest match maybe be
Cry Havoc, which is allegedly based on a lager strain smuggled out of an
Anheuser-Busch brewery some three decades ago. I would experiment a bit with relatively clean, malt-forward lager yeasts until you find something you feel is close.
.... I'm intrigued though and will probably play around a bit using the suggestions above and tell him eureka, I got it! And will enjoy a good home crafted beer.
