Coopers Vintage Ale

Brewed by Coopers Brewery
Style: English Strong Ale
Regency Park, South Australia, Australia

Bottle. Cloudy (tried to leave the yeast in the bottle, but some got to the glass) brown with no head. Pleasant aroma - malty with some fruit (apples?) and maybe chocolate. Palate was full bodied, almost oily with lively carbonation (perhaps too much for this style, but I rather enjoyed it). Flavour starts sweet with malt and some fruit (again apples perhaps), develops some rich more bitterness (dark chocolate, perhaps coffee) and finishes on a good bitter note. An enjoyable beer, but it somehow misses being a great beer.

Ugh this is terrible. I don’t know what they were going for here, but I don’t like it. Tastes like a muddled barley wine and without this site’s guidance that’s what I would have thought it was. Aroma was dark fruit. Pour was a muddy flat brown with no head. Taste was very wierd. Plum, grapes and bubblegum with a hot alcohol aftertaste. Blah.

A great beer. Highly flavoursome, with loads of depth and character. Not to mention a tad kickarse! Quite a strong brew!

12 oz bottle purvhased at Ocean W&S that states Batch 4 Oct/2002. Pours a muddy medium brown that is slightly orange with a small bubbly white head and so much sediment in the bottle that it dropped out of the bottle in solid chunks. Inital aroma is very sweet with lots of honey, raisins and slight vinous notes. Palate is overly carbonated, even at 5 years old, and has a slightly dry finish. Flavor is where the let down comes in because this beer has a nice flavor but seems to be watered down, beer spritzer anyone?? What flavor is there is sweet with lots of honey up front and then grainy bread with a slight touch of rye mixed in. Okay beer but could have been so uch more, basically the Ricky Williams of beer so much wasted potential.

Pours from the bottle to a dark reddish-brown color with medium off-white head that lingers until mid -glass and leaves okay lacing. Nose is hoppy fruit (apples and grapes) with the 7.5% abv making itself more known as the beer warmed. LIkewise the flavor was hops and alcohol and the finish was warming, with the alcohol very much present. An enjoyable beer that I would have ranked even higher had the alcohol not taken over the flavor and nose quite so strongly.

A nice looking amber colored beer with lots going on in the glass. The aroma was a little hard if you know what I mean, if fact it smelled like a 7.5% alcohol beer. The flavor followed suit and was a little hard to swallow for my taste, with the finish being much of the same and a litte bitter. I did appreciate the dark yeast in the bottle of the glass and I do think that the folks at Cooper are definitely moving in the right direction, but this beer is just ho-hum for me.

12.7oz bottle: pours into a glass a very murky brown color with very little head. there is almost no aroma at all, flavor i cant associate with anything i have had before but isnt bad at all and covers the 7.5 abv very well. overall a pretty good beer but the ABV is a little high for not having a lot of range in flavor.

$3.20. Bottled Sept 10 2006. Bought 7/11/07. Small to no head (my frig is very cold). Nice dark yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle. Dark amber color, became cloudy because of yeast from the pour. Small bubbles quickly dissipating. Aroma is mild. I’ll let it warm up a bit. The statistics are interesting. It starts off a 5.0 in Feb 2001, and now it’s a 3.4? It looks like back then mostly Austrailians were drinking this. Aussy beer scene probably wasn’t that good in 2001. Warmer now, but still little aroma, maybe a little caramel, no hops. Flavor leans dry. A hint of bitterness in the finish. A bit of higher alcohol, but at low levels. Not very tasty. Maybe it’s better fresh, rather than vintaged as the bottle says.