AC Golden Brewing Co., the craft workshop located within Molson Coors Beverage Company’s Golden, Colo., brewery, is making it easier to find one of the white whales of the beer world.
For the first time, Barmen Pilsner, the notoriously scarce German-style Pilsner brewed by AC Golden, will be available outside of its purposely small on-premise footprint.
The beer is part of the new Golden Trilogy Pack, a variety 12-pack rolling out this month in Colorado that features a trio of lagers with their own unique backstory. And yes, Barmen’s signature seven-minute pour still applies.
Joining Barmen in the Golden Trilogy Pack, which is available through the end of the year, are Coors Banquet and Batch 19, the pre-Prohibition-style lager available in Colorado and Wisconsin.
“Everyone loves these beers, especially brewery employees in Golden. They’re too good not to share with other people,” says David Coors, Molson Coors’ vice president of next generation beverages, a division that includes AC Golden. “They all speak to the Coors heritage and history differently, uniquely and beautifully.”
Variety packs have proven to be a successful way to showcase beer brands, especially around the holidays, and the opportunity to combine three vaunted brands together was a hit with distributors, says Meagan Nelson, associate marketing manager for AC Golden.
“When we first introduced the idea of a variety pack featuring Coors Banquet paired with Batch 19 and Barmen, the response we received was so big we knew we had to do it,” she says. “These three beers all have an amazing heritage story that all tie back to the Golden brewery.”
Each beer in the Golden Trilogy Pack has a unique history that is rooted in scarcity – and legend. Coors Banquet, brewed in Golden since 1873, unveiled new packaging in the spring that charts its history of being “stolen, smuggled and sought after.” Batch 19, meanwhile, is based on one of Adolph Coors’ original recipes discovered in an old log book. It returned to shelves in Colorado and Wisconsin in May after a five-year absence.
Barmen, an homage to Adolph Coors’ hometown in what used to be called Prussia, entails an entirely new level of scarcity.
Just a few hundred barrels are produced annually for about two dozen on-premise accounts, all located in Colorado, Coors says. What’s more, each account pledges to serve the Pilsner in special glassware, employing its signature seven-minute pour, creating a thick head, foam lacing on the glass and a unique drinking experience reminiscent of its old-world heritage.
(Barmen fans often order a Barmen and a Banquet, the latter of which to sip on while they wait for a slow pour of the former.)
Each can in the variety 12-pack includes a snippet of the beers’ backstories, and Barmen cans include instructions on how to execute the perfect seven-minute pour.
“I have received a lot of questions around the seven-minute pour, and I was reminded that (former Coors Brewing President) Uncle Bill (Coors) always said: ‘There are no sacred cows,’” says Coors. “To have such a great beer that is not more readily available is a shame. We developed a team that tested how this beer could live in a packaged format, and through extensive testing we felt we could give fans the seven-minute pour experience via a can – if they can manage their patience accordingly.”
Better have a Banquet ready.