Coopers Brewery will follow up its new Brew A IPA with further seasonal releases in the coming months, according to brewing manager Jon Meneses.
He told Australian Brews News that an Amber Ale is next in line for draught-only release in September, with a craft-style lager likely to be released in cans in time for Summer.
“It’s the latest thinking – to provide beer drinkers with an alternative to what Coopers are known for, and a lead-in to all our other products,” Meneses said.
As the hottest craft beer style of the moment, Coopers technical manager Simon Fahey said IPA was a logical choice for the brewer’s first seasonal.
But he pointed out that there was an IPA in the Coopers range in its early history, so the brewery was actually about 100 years ahead of the current trend.
“That was in our portfolio for some time until IPAs lost their appeal, as beers sometimes do,” said Fahey.
The new Brew A is hopped 60/40 with Enigma and Cascade and Fahey describes it as a “Coopers version of an IPA”.
“We thought, we don’t really want it to be an English IPA, so you don’t get any of that woody noble hop character, which is probably what Thomas Cooper first had as his IPA.
“We don’t want to be really, really American, so you don’t really want to be smacked in the face with American hops – that would be very ‘un-Cooperish’.
“It’s not American, it’s not English, it’s not New World – it’s us,” he said.