“Just because you are the tallest pigmy in the tribe it doesn’t make you a giant”. The way I interpret that saying is that no matter how good you think you are, there will always be someone out there better than you, so be a bit humble. Those words sprang to mind when I tried this week’s Drop, “Coopers 62 Pilsner”.
This is an epic fail from a brewery that often performs better, what were they thinking?
The 62 Pilsner has a pale champagne-like colour, and is extremely bubbly which helps it hold up the thick white head. This could possibly have the whitest head I’ve ever seen on a beer. The aromas were a bit “plastic”, with a light edge of fruit playing on the end, almost as if it were off, although I don’t suspect that it was. There is a distinct hop smell and a touch of the “pine forest smell” that you can smell around Cardwell.
On the tongue the taste is a mixture of bitters and hops with little in the way of anything else really. There is a slight hint of lychee at the beginning and then it spirals down, quickly I might add, into a plastic-resiny bitterness that ends when your face has finally puckered right up and you can’t sip your beer any more. The mouthfeel is quite tingly from all of the bubbles, yet a touch sticky, which doesn’t sit quite right with the bitter flavour or the fact that it’s a Pilsner. That long bitter finish again made me think this was stale. In fact the staleness of the bitter taste is such that it spoils any real refreshment that I would expect from beer, any beer not just this one. How much bitterness?
It could be best likened to winning a “Celebrity Dinner“ to then find out it had to be spent with Kyle Sandilands who spent the night complaining about working on radio, Dave Hughes and Magda Szubanski, when you know in reality it’s just the fact that he’s a tool and should pull his head in!
Well, maybe not quite that amount of bitterness, but you get the drift, and it shouldn’t be all that bitter as it’s a Pilsner. I’ve often said that there seems to be an Australian prejudice to Pilsner, if the Coopers 62 is an example of what those carrying that opinion are trying, then it is little wonder that Pilsner carries that stigma.
Maybe the sample I got was off, or maybe Coopers are being a bit sneaky and this is a trial batch of an Australian brewed Budweiser, as Coopers distribute Budweiser in Australia through its 80 per cent-owned company Premium Beverages.
Or maybe, just maybe, Coopers have made a terrible mistake, and I’m going to have to cry myself to sleep for the rest of the year….or think of Hughesy head butting Sandilands to make me feel better.
Nice bottle though.
