Cooper’s Best Extra Stout
Australian beer tends to get a bit of an unfortunate reputation, what with all the low-quality mass produced lager that floods the market. But brewers like Little Creatures and Bootleg manage to stand out (just about) from the morass, if you search hard enough. Straddling these two worlds is Adelaide brewery Coopers, who take up an impressive 3% of the Australian national market. That doesn’t sound much, but when two companies claim 95% domination, 3% looks halfway decent. As you’d expect, those other two are the lager-heavy pushers Lion Nathan (Castlemaine XXXX, Toohey’s, James Boag, Hahn) and Carlton & Union Breweries (Carlton Draught, Fosters, Crown Lager, VB).
Coopers were founded by Thomas Cooper in 1862, who saw a gap in the recently founded territory of South Australia for a decent brewer. Adelaide had several producers, but as he noted …”they all use a good deal of sugar and so on for brewing, but we use only malt and hops, consequently, ours being pure, the doctors recommend it to all their patients.” The current MD and head brewer is fifth-generation Tim Cooper, who trained as a medical doctor down under before heading to Birmingham to re-train as a brewer. These days they put out about a dozen beers, with their flagship being the 5.8% Coopers Sparkling – however it was their 6.3% Best Extra Stout that we managed to get hold of recently.
It pours like black treacle, with a tan head that disperses swiftly to leave a thin film of bubbles, and then almost nothing. It’s utterly black, with no highlights to speak of at all. The aroma is roasted malt, alcohol and prunes – very much a winter warmer or autumnal pick-me-up. The mouthfeel is very fizzy and surprisingly quite thin, given the oily blackness of the beer – but the flavours are really good – dark malts, iron, some coffee beans. The aftertaste is coffee and dark bitter chocolate – something astringent like a 70%+ choc – it’s really rewarding on the palate. A very impressive stout.
