Coopers Vintage Ale

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

A christmas day taste-off between the 2007 and 2008 vintages. Found the 2008 vintage to be spicier, meanwhite the 2007 vintage was more woody on the nose and the flavour was more distinctively orange with apple in the finish. Either way, a brilliant beer. Ho ho ho.

<b>Bottle.</b>
Unclear medium orange amber color with a small, virtually none head. Aroma is moderate malty, roasted, caramel, vintage notes. Flavor is moderate to light heavy sweet and light to moderate bitter with a average to long duration. Body is medium, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. (070808)

Aroma is slightly sweet with notes of apple, cherry, caramel, and yeast. The beer looks gorgeous with a deep orange colour and a ton of floaties suspended in the beer, this has a very small head, but the head has very good retention, considering I’ve been sitting next to it for about ten minutes waiting for my computer to re-boot. Taste has distinct caramel notes, with plenty of hop bitterness, this tastes like a very strong esb. Palate is sharp from bitterness with a slight burn from the alcohol. This however is pleasant and not overwhelming at all.

Bottle, 375ml. Pours russet, with little short-living head, and soft lacing. Fruity on the nose, and full-bodied on the palate, with well balanced yeast, barley, and malt, with the faintest of notes of honey. With the reassuring sediment of a properly fermented beer, a very decent ale.

Bottled: Aroma is fruity with chocolate notes. Orange color, nearly no head. Flavor is light sweet and malty, medium bodied and round. Fruity, yeasty, light spicy. Light chocolate and roasted malt in the end. Quite nice but not too special.

2007 Vintage. Damn impressive. Packed full of flavour and nice thickish texture and body to it too. Extremely strong - it hits you from the first mouthful and never stops. This is not ’hit’ in the violent fashion either, but something incredibly delightful and indeed delicious. A few extremely minor drawbacks though: it would be a very, very bad idea in summer, and it is so strong you cannot possibly have more than one in the one sitting. These are but nothing, however, as one of these will have you on a beer high for weeks.

Bottle from Andersons in Toledo, BBD 3-1-08, pours a light amber and honey browns, some haze or cloudiness, had some sediment chunks pour from the bottle, some off-white bubbles that formed a small ring, aromas of caramel, toasted malt and some earthiness, flavors of light caramel, malt sweetness, bread, toasted malt, some yeast, some alcohol taste in the background but it does not grow as the ale warms which is good, surprised to get this with a 7.5% beer, a faint fruit flavor of prunes, sort of a disappointment, I was expecting something more, yes, it is past the BBD by three months or so, I may try another bottle to compare.

This is a good one. An interesting flavor that changes over time (if you’re able to set some aside, that is!). Fruity, sweet, tart, malty. Very pretty in a glass--dark red, almost orange-brown in color with floating yeast from the bottle conditioning. One of my favorites.