CHICAGO - MillerCoors is planning to test market a new beer, Batch 19, which is reminiscent of pre-Prohibition recipe, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Although slated for on-premise consumption, the new brew will start selling in bars and restaurants in April in Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Washington, according to Peter Swinburn, CEO of Molson Coors Brewing Co., which co-owns MillerCoors.

He told the news source that Batch 19 is "designed to attract consumers looking for 'a true, authentic, original beer.??" The newspaper also notes that MillerCoors is "rolling out new products and packaging styles amid one of the biggest slumps in demand the industry has faced in years."

Citing beer industry publication Beer Marketer??s Insights, the newspaper notes that shipments of beer in the United States declined about 2% in 2009.

MillerCoors "is trying to be innovative in a crowded market" with new products such as MGD 64. Swinburn commented that the company would also consider more acquisitions, and that its "encouraged by the growth of Coors Light in China, and might look into buying a brewery in China or starting its own."

"We will look to, when the time is right, underpin that volume because it's getting to the stage now where the margin that we would enjoy from producing it ourselves would justify a certain level of capital investment," Swinburn told the newspaper, adding, "We've painstakingly built that market over eight years, city by city."