He probably encountered it while skiing in Colorado. When I ski in Colorado I prefer Breckenridge Avalanche; when I ski in Montana I prefer Moose Drool.
Gerald Ford may have helped popularize Coors, but it had the underground rep long before Ford was President. My third year in college ('69-'70: Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...), a friend who lived in Sedalia, Colorado (just south of Denver) drove his car back to Virginia, after Spring break, with the trunk and back seat full of Coors. I'd been looking forward to drinking it, as it had assumed mythic prportions. Boy, was I disappointed. Of course my beer of choice back then was Schlitz. Gotta comment on his car. It was an old limousine, that he had painted bright green. The rear doors were the "suicide" door, that opened in the opposite dirrection of the front doors. It had a non-synchronous trasmission, so you had to double clutch to shift gears. (OK, kids. That's tech talk from my generation. ) It was a bitch to drive in C'ville, but I guess he was used to it comimg from Colorado. asitis
I had a friend from Tulsa named Frank Sinclair. He had been given his daddy's Cadillac, and at home he always filled it at a Sinclair station using his Sinclair card. Actually, he was no relation to the Sinclair oil family, but the station attendants didn't know that and swarmed the Caddy whenever he pulled in to fill up. Unfortunately for one of them, the hood couldn't be latched, so Frank had pushed it back against the springs and wired it shut. When the attendant unwound the wire to open the hood and check the oil the springs released and the hood slammed into his chest and knocked him ten feet backwards onto the pavement. I'm sure he wondered how the son of the President of Sinclair Oil could pass up getting the Caddy's hood repaired.
I had some friends in the AFB band at home, and they played a duty gig (for whatever reason) out in CO. They brought back many cases of the stuff, and satisfied my curiosity. I still liked Rolling Rock better.