Coors—Yes, The Brewer—Enters Plant-Based Milk Market With Beer-Making Barley
By Mikelle Leow, 23 May 2022
Image via Golden Wing
Molson Coors has launched Golden Wing. It’s not a beer. It’s not even a new chicken wing joint. It’s vegan milk, which places the parent company of Coors Light and Miller Lite in the ranks of producers of oat milk, soy milk, almond milk, and even cow-free ‘dairy’ that genetically replicates cow DNA.
The company has known barley for over two centuries now—it’s the prime ingredient in all of its beers. So it’s quite literally milking what it knows best to create plant-based barley milk.
To address the elephant in the room, Golden Wing Barley Milk will be alcohol-free. According to Coors, the plant-based milk has a natural, malty sweetness and an experience closer to “drinking milk at the bottom of your cereal bowl.”
Image via Golden Wing
Ingredients are just water, non-GMO barley, sunflower extract, calcium carbonate, pink Himalayan salt, and shiitake mushroom extract. In addition, Coors says Golden Wing has 60% less sugar and 50% more calcium than two-percent dairy milk, as well as double the amount of Vitamin D3.
The vegan milk is available for purchase on the Golden Wing website for US$30 for six cartons, and will appear on the dairy aisle at Sprouts stores in California and Whole Foods locations in Southern California. The brand, however, is being extra cautious for now and hopes to gauge crowd reactions from a soft launch before winging Golden Wing on a larger scale.
[via Food & Wine and Food Dive, images via Golden Wing]