Coopers Vintage Ale

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

2007 bottle at GBBF 2008. Cloudy amber with a small white head. Dried fruit aroma of priunes and plums. Sweet and full bodied fruity flavour with a quite oxidized impression.

Pours a hazy amber body with a beige, lacing head. Smells of brown sugar, pineapple, and malt. Flavors of brown sugar and a little toast. Brown sugar finish.

Bottle. Strong raw fruity yeasty notes with sweet caramel and apple juice. Amber pour, clear, with a large rocky, smoothly frothy beige head. Taste is sweet malt and alcohol, more of those pale malts and apple juice, light yeastiness (though dense in suspension) and fermented at higher temperatures. Light body just a step above watery, dries significantly out by the end. Crisp carbonation.

A wonderful hazy caramel color and alluring aroma are disappointed by a somewhat lacking flavor and odd aftertaste.

2007 Vintage. Killin’ to Zero The Hero!!! - song is awesome. Cannibal Corpse version is pretty fine too. Poured out a decent, slightly hazy burnt orange brew with almost zero head produced, and that is too bad. The aroma early on is quite forgettable but if you let this sucker warm, that’s when all the goodness comes out: mild toffee, pears and apricots, berries, oak, slight smoke, biscuit and alcohol. Early on the taste is pretty much brutal and totally unpleasant but once I let it warm and got used to the flavors that exist i enjoyed it more. Still strong with alcohol, too much actually, but once I get past that i find instant bitterness, licorice, quite malty and a bit of chocolate, which I swear I thought I had found in the aroma once or twice. The mouth feel is nothing great as the thickness of the beer is lacking for what I wanted but it does have a good swish. Early on it finishes very harsh, later on it is very smooth with a soft aftertaste. WARM LOTS!!! This beer is ass when cooler.

A little hazy, dark orange colored beer, with a beige head. The aroma of caramel with fruits like apricot. The taste is spicey, like peppers, with fruits apricot and citrus. There is some bitterness. The aftertaste is bittersweet some dry.

Pours a beautiful hazy hazelnut color with an off-white head. Nose full of succulent malts, caramel, and mouthwatering hops on the tip. Hoppy but malty on the tongue with notes of oak, caramel, and licorice. Delicious! But missing something...

2008. nose of burnt toffee, cardboard, fruity. Deep rich honeyed orange/brown color. Hazy. Hot on the palate even though its only 7.5%. Aromas follow through on palate. Tons of woody malt, dogfood? Some nice fruit qualities, but all out of wack on the balance. Too bad Coopers is sticking to the 150 yr old family recipe, cause they all suck. Pretty much par for the course for Aussie beer in general. Will they ever get over their penchant for cheap, flavorless beer, not that this is either, but seriously, when is the rest of the world going to get to taste anything worth its salt from AU. Finish sucks. Wow.