Tag Archives: Coopers

0

Slender Elegance

|

With immense kindness, you bought me a Coopers Glass.

While you were out, you drifted into an Op Shop and thought of me—a simple transaction yet one abundant with love. You bought this because as we sat outside, you knew I’d be able to pour a beer into it, and for me it would enrich that place.

And you know so well how I love place—especially, our veranda.

It’s a bid that arrived without complication or messy context and simply says, ‘I love you and hope this brings you joy.’ It’s a declaration of devotion and consideration. In a world often filled with loud gestures and grand expressions, its slender elegance and humility hold appeal.

With its fetching, silent curves, it doesn’t beg for attention. The glass is efficient but wants no boisterous recognition. Free of ostentation, there’re no unnecessary embellishments but it catches my eye with its allure, every time.

Quietly, it holds profound enchantment—a meaningful investment of thought and care.

Out back, on the table, with Neil Diamond as the heartening soundtrack, the fading light dances with the garden—a scene both painterly and idyllic. The dark will shortly rise from the lawn. It transcends, a poetic expression of intimacy.

It’s all you.

0

Seven Ways of Looking at a Sparkling Ale Longneck

|

#1

This statesmanlike, red-labelled bottle is a narrative.

In the realm of ales, it’s Ulysses. A front bar round of pints is often comic theatre, and a butcher of ale (200ml for the uncertain) is a haiku revealing its buried fortune as you dig into its poetic earth. But the Coopers Sparkling Ale prose is of canonical eminence. Like engaging with longform art, there’s opportunity for immersive delight but also an obligation to contemplate life’s deeper themes. It’s your favourite novel, your Great Gatsby which you re-read on the lounge as an affirming annual indulgence after Boxing Day.

#2

No, this beer isn’t The Beatles. With a heart prone to menace and darkness it’s The Rolling Stones and their farewell letter to the sixties, Let It Bleed. Every glass contains Mick and Keef’s nightfall poetry and gritty realities, deathless swagger and irresolvable tension. We traverse from the ‘apocalyptic dread’ of that first foamy tumbler in ‘Gimme Shelter’ to the psychological ruin sweeping across, ’You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Now, the music fades and you drain the dregs into your cherished schooner as the glimmering sun slants in over the back lawn.

#3

My Friday evening ritual is a Sistine Chapel visit. Like many of life’s joys, one is sufficient but two is dastardly excess from which no good can result. Take in the grandeur, and purity of aspiration. Open-mouthed and fizzing of brain, I stare up at Michelangelo’s ceiling. But do it only once. And if you’re tempted, don’t return to the fridge for a second bottle. You’re done. What else can you request from a work of art?

#4

Each frosty longneck comes complete with engaging conversation, original observations, and deep introspection. Listen to its voice and you’re reminded of Richard Burton, all conquest and divine warmth, commencing his narration in Under Milkwood

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town

Starless and bible-black

The cobblestreets silent and the hunched

courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible

down to the sloeblack slow, black, crowblack,

fishingboatbobbing sea.

#5

Old bull: No, let’s walk down and do the lot.

#6

It’s also a maverick. The only beer commonly viewed as being better out of a bottle and not taken from the keg. Why is it so? The scientists could tell us but at play there’s delightful alchemy. Flip the bottle top and shake hands with this twelfth apostle, this preternaturally talented twelfth man cricketer, this Lysithea (the twelfth moon of Jupiter). Another time when the reluctant rebel instructs those of us safely inside the fence line.

#7

Erect of glassed carriage it dominates its alfresco setting. A statement beverage, announcing itself as quietly authoritative. Warning against a flimsy heart but offering steely security of purpose. Depending on the light, it’s a romantic painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, or a Shakespearean sonnet, but ultimately, it’s dynamic and organic like Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural wonder, Falling Water.

0

Beer Review: Coopers Hazy IPA

|

ipa

Coopers were like AC/DC.

Just doing what they’d always done, and their version of playing the same three chords over and over presented as reliance upon the red, green and yellow beers also known as sparkling ale, pale ale and stout. The fans loved it and thirsts were quenched and all were merry.

But the emergence of craft beers and brewers has forced Coopers into reinvention. In recent years they’ve launched a Session Ale and an XPA. Today, a Hazy IPA hit the market, sort of.

We were promised, courtesy of a moderate advertising and marketing campaign, that it’d be available on tap and in cans. No pub in Glenelg has it yet and neither does any local stockist.

I drove to a large beer and liquor emporium whose name sounds like Dan Murphy’s and found cartons of it on the floor. Yippee!

But there was none in their fridge so I asked, “Any cold Hazy IPA?” The young employee blinked at me and said, “We only got these about midday.” Being someone who could grump for his country I questioned, to nobody in particular, “So in the seven hours since no-one thought to put any in the fridge?”

It was as if I had dropped the needle onto Back in Black and could only hear radio silence.

So, what’s it like?

The hue is Coopers: murky and mysterious and promising mischief with its dark citrus presentation. This continues with the nose that has necessarily departed from the yeasty hoppiness that sung Coopers down the generations.

Angus Young’s amp has been turned off and instead a weedy boy is on the decks. The black t-shirt brigade won’t be thrilled, but then again, they probably don’t care as they’re kicking back in the shed with a long neck of sparkling ale.

decks

At 6.2% the Hazy IPA is more Highway to Hell than Best of the Backstreet Boys so no chainsaw chores after a couple. Unlike the one-armed drummer in Def Leppard you might struggle to play the Stratocaster minus a limb.

But, as such it’s surprisingly easy to drink, even more so than the acclaimed Vintage Ale which I confess I find difficult to love. It’s too big and cumbersome for me and is work, not fun. Something beer should never be.

I do wonder if Coopers are self-cannibalising as their beers are competing with each other. The name Hazy IPA is a nod to the East Coast beers of Massachusetts and perhaps a desperate sign as Coopers beers are historically hazy.

Indeed, it’s expected.

Maybe, like AC/DC they’re just trying to keep up with the kids.

ACDC