A brewer’s grandsons, a gaseosa and an orange.

Kas comes from Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of Álava in the Basque Country, and from a family of drink makers that had been there since the nineteenth century. English Wikipedia says Román Knörr Streiff, a German-born brewer, arrived in Vitoria in 1870 and founded a beer factory, La Esperanza, with his wife’s family; El Mundo, in a 2012 obituary, described the family’s founder as a Bavarian master brewer who settled in the city that year. In the 1920s, English Wikipedia says, his son Román Knörr Ortiz started a soft-drink business under the name El As — “the ace.” El Independiente, in a 2017 history of the brand, also dates the El As gaseosa factory to the 1920s.

The orange drink came from the next generation. Spanish Wikipedia, citing the Basque encyclopedia Auñamendi, says the brothers José María and Luis Knörr Elorza had the idea of mixing the family’s gaseosa with orange-juice concentrate in 1956, and that a third brother, Javier Knörr Elorza, suggested putting the family initial in front of the old brand name: K plus As. Cadena SER, marking the brand’s fiftieth anniversary in April 2006, also dated Kas to 1956, said it was first sold as “Zumo de Naranja el As,” and called it the first orange soft drink in Spain, five years before Coca-Cola’s Fanta arrived in 1961.

Not every account gives the same date. El Mundo’s obituary of José María Knörr, who died in Vitoria in May 2012 at the age of 95, said he began experimenting with citrus in 1952, producing an El As orange juice, and added the K two years later; El Independiente also gives 1954. The obituary called him the family’s “alchemist” and credited him with creating the drink together with his wife. Cadena SER said Kas was at first mostly sold in one-litre bottles, and that for the anniversary in 2006 the brand reissued, as a limited edition, the original one-litre glass bottle, which had been sold until the late 1970s.

Lemon, cola, a bitter and a cycling team.

Kas soon grew beyond orange. Cadena SER traced the range from orange to lemon and then to a cola, Kaskol; English Wikipedia says the company opened new plants across Spain in the 1960s and launched the cola and Bitter Kas, an alcohol-free aperitif. In August 2026 La Vanguardia reported that the Bitter Kas formula was created in 1966 in Barcelona by the pharmacist and chemist Daniel Hausmann, a friend of the Knörr family, who had asked him for an alcohol-free drink to serve before meals in the Italian manner. The paper said the recipe combines 21 plant extracts, and his family told it that he gave the formula to his friends in Vitoria rather than selling it.

The brand’s best-known advertising was on wheels. The Kas cycling team, based in Vitoria and named after its sponsor, raced from 1958 to 1979 and again in the late 1980s, English Wikipedia says, usually in a yellow and blue jersey. Its riders included Federico Bahamontes, signed in 1959, and Julio Jiménez; racing as Kas–Kaskol, the team took the first three places in the 1966 Vuelta a España, won by Francisco Gabica. El Mundo said José María Knörr organised a Tour de France finish in Vitoria, at the industrial estate where Kas had its factory, in the years of Eddy Merckx. Spanish Wikipedia gives an early slogan, “Beba Kas y nada más” (“Drink Kas and nothing else”), and El Independiente says the brand advertised alongside the Spanish national team at the 1982 World Cup, held in Spain.

Television brought a different register. In the mid-1990s, Spanish and English Wikipedia say, the “24 Horas Kas” campaign used a jingle based on “Dame Más,” Álex de la Nuez’s Spanish version of the Steve Miller Band’s 1982 song “Give It Up,” and introduced a “Chica Kas” in a wide-brimmed hat, an answer to the earlier “Chica Mirinda.” English Wikipedia says the campaign was adapted in Mexico, where Pepsi-Cola launched a grapefruit Kas in 1994 against Coca-Cola’s Fresca, and that the Mexican drink was renamed Kas Mas in 2006.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make drinks, and all of them come from Sweden, Belgium or Spain: Pripps, Ramlösa, Jupiler, Estrella Damm, Mahou, Cruzcampo and Kas. Drink brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger brewing and beverage groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner bar to a supermarket shelf.

A drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a bottle, a label, a name and the occasion it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its brewery or bottling plant or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually brewed, bottled and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its labels and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From the Knörr family to the banks to PepsiCo.

The Knörr family kept control while Kas expanded, but the expansion was costly. El Independiente says the company’s creditor banks took a stake in the 1970s and a majority in the 1980s, and that it was the banks that decided to sell to PepsiCo; Spanish Wikipedia, citing Auñamendi, names the Banco de Bilbao as the buyer of a majority stake in the late 1980s. Cadena SER said that in 1987 Pepsi let Kas bottle Pepsi’s soft drinks and that in 1992 it bought the company; Spanish Wikipedia says PepsiCo’s Spanish subsidiary bought the parent company and the Kas brand that year.

PepsiCo already owned Mirinda, another orange drink born in Spain. El Independiente reported in 2017 that PepsiCo chose Kas, which had the stronger factory network and wider reach in Spain, and stopped distributing Mirinda there except in the Canary Islands, while Mirinda carried on in other countries. Kas is still made in Álava: Cadena SER reported in 2006 that PepsiCo’s bottling plant at Etxabarri Ibiña packed more than half of what the company sold in Spain, and Spanish Wikipedia describes the plant at Echávarri-Viña, in the municipality of Zigoitia, as the current Kas factory. English Wikipedia lists Kas as sold in Spain, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and France, where it is popular in the south-west.

For a design guide, Kas shows a soft-drink name built from a family initial and an older brand, carried for decades through cycling and television advertising, and kept by a multinational owner for its home market; compare Cola Cao, another Spanish drink brand remembered for its advertising, and Estrella Damm. For this guide we use Kas orange, lemon yellow and a deep jersey blue with a heavy rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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