VIP beer tour of the Coors Brewery with Peter J. Coors

Peter J. Coors makes one heck of a good brewery tour guide.

On a recent morning, after pulling into the employee parking lot at the Coors Brewery in Golden, I pressed the button on the communications box and said to the security guard: "I'm here to see Peter Coors." A few seconds later the gate went up.

The massive brewery stood before me as I crossed the employee bridge toward the tour entrance doors. Pausing a moment to take in the sight, I pushed opened the door to the spacious lobby. 

It wasn't long to the elevators where Coors stood with a few other tour participants, welcoming us with a bright smile.

Making our way upward to Bill's Pub — an employee bar that opened in 2010 inside the brewery — the views of Golden and the foothills surrounding the town become apparent. Already on the job, Coors walked over to the bar, began washing and drying pint glasses while chatting with guests eagerly waiting for an exclusive tour of the 150-year-old brewery.

As other guests arrived and the meet-and-greet session ended, Coors gave us a what's-what before the tour began.

Tour guests suited up with reflector vests, steel-tipped shoe covers and Coors-themed baseball hard hats.

If you've never been to the Coors Brewery, know this; it is big, very big. It sits on 1,600 acres of land, is the world's largest single-source brewery, and produces approximately 9.7 million barrels per year with the capacity to make between 11 and 12 million per year.

And as our group began the tour, the brewery's size became evident immediately. We went down multiple stair wells, several hallways, took an elevator at one point, before reaching the factory floor and I had no clue where we actually were.

But it didn't matter, the fun had started. 

"Sugar equals alcohol and alcohol equals beer," Coors said to our group as we stood inside the germination beds room, looking at rows of malting barley.

Several of us reached into the beds, grabbing smalls amounts of malting barley kernels to taste. The smells of the kernels alone was very inviting, but the taste was even better, with a slightly sweet note to it and similar to fresh cereal or toast. 

Coors' father Peter H. Coors told a family story that Coors shared with our group about a time Adolph Coors II became stuck in the door-lock space between the germination room and the hallway outside.

He said of "Gramps:" "Well, I figured somebody would come by eventually," Adolph II said. Coors then said, "and dad's like he did not know how long Ad Jr. was stuck in there, but he was stuck in there," laughing about the family lore. 

Continuing through the brewery and what felt like getting lost more, we arrived in the AC Golden room — Coors' craft brewery area. 

In this space sits a copper sink used by Adolph Coors, a wall of used beer bottles of the breweries brands and a malting shovel, and a smaller vat used to make and test small batches of beer.

Coors talked about a big change he oversaw between 2005 and 2006 when the introduction of corn syrup — "not high-fructose corn syrup," Coors made sure everybody knew — replaced corn starch.

"We switched from using rice to corn starch to corn syrup, which helped with efficiency and cost," Coors said.

Two other interesting facts about AC Golden is the brand makes approximately 15,000 barrels a year and Coors Light was developed in the small vat back in the late 1970s. There's an AC Golden Tank Room at Tom's Watch Bar in McGregor Square near Coors Field that serves the beer created here.

From the AC Golden room we ventured down stairs into the larger brew houses. Coors Brewery has a north and south house. Dozens of vats are spread around the room with copper lining the tops of the kettles.

However, as Coors pointed out, "the copper kettles aren't fully copper any more, they are stainless steel inside, since copper erodes into the water over time, but we kept the copper tops for show."

Coors added two more interesting facts. The brewery tries to keep a tight lock on the ABV (alcohol by volume) on its signature beer 'Coors Banquet' between 4.9% -5.03% and all the beers brewed except "Blue Moon" are pasteurized. 

Closing out the tour and still lost, we made our way to a filtering room where a tap of the "freshest Coors beer anywhere" was poured straight off the line. 

While the group enjoyed a small tasting pour, Coors spoke about the two kinds of taste testers the brewery employs: basic and advanced.

Basic testers will sample beers daily for quality and drinkability while advanced testers sample beers blindly, rate on standards created for the beer, and look for flavor notes like ester (fruity notes).

"Coors beers made in Golden taste a little different than the ones brewed away from here (Milwaukee brewery)," Coors said. 

Coors also told a story about a woman taste tester — but not just any tester.

"We had a woman taster, she was Mormon, and didn't drink due to her religion. However, she was granted special permission from her religious leader to work for Coors and since she had been hired on as a taster, drinking was her work, so she was able to drink our beers and ended up being a great beer taste tester," Coors said.

Back at Bill's Pub with the gorgeous view of Golden, Coors needed to depart for the remainder of the day. But he was asked about the relationship between the brewery and the city of Golden.

"The symbiotic relationship between the city and the brewery has been great. Like any siblings we have our rivalries, our differences, but the brewery would not be what it is today without the city of Golden, and I think the city of Golden wouldn't be what it is today without the brewery," Coors said. "We're a major tourist attraction here in Golden. Not many people say, 'hey, I'm going to Lakewood to visit,' it's 'I'm going to Golden'." 

PHOTOS: Peter J. Coors' VIP tour of Coors Brewery