Archive for the 'Cooper’s' category
Cooper’s Best Extra Stout
And here we come to out final beer from this month’s Beer of the Month Club shipment. It dawned on me this evening that this month’s shipment consisted of only very dark beers. Not a bad choice, but an interesting one from BOMC – while varied geographically, it is the least varied stylistically that I’ve seen yet.
Personally, I have never seen a Cooper’s beer anywhere but at the Outback franchise restaurant. For that reason, I’ve often wondered if it was some house beer that was being contract brewed by some lackluster brewery. However, seeing the Cooper’s Stout in this BOMC shipment legitimized the brand to me somewhat, and I’m curious to finally taste and assess this brewery.
This Stout, predictably, pours super dark. It has a very luscious head – thick and dense with a finger’s worth of dark caramel color. The aroma of this beer is chock full of coffee and chocolate and smells downright delicious. In the mouth, this is a REALLY respectable stout. There is a ton of coffee here – almost enough to merit a “coffee stout” title. However, there is also enough toffee and chocolate here to round it all out, along with a nice nutty bitterness to keep this from being either to sweet or too coffee-y. There is much more flavor in this stout than you expect to find in almost any beer. In fact, it is, by all accounts, ‘imperial’ in my book. Perhaps it’s true that everything is bigger in Australia, because this flavor is so much more than you expect when you open any normal stout. What I’m getting at here is that this is a huge stout, full of sweetness lent from chocolate, toffee and coffee along with a balancing nutty bitterness. It is an excellent beer and likely takes it’s place among my top 5 Stouts of all time. Definitely try this out and don’t blame ‘em for selling to the Outback…
