Hey Charger! Get us a beer

All that glitters is not gold, as Gary Glitter demonstrated. Nor is all that sparkles, particularly with the current spate of pasty emo teen vampires in need of a picket fence paling up the jacksie. If anything, the very adjectival concept of 'sparkling' needs to be reclaimed from the bucket of arse that is the Twilight franchise, which is and remains an insult to all that sparkles.



However, there still remains that which sparkles which is indeed gold, both in the metaphorical and the spectroscopic sense. That being the wonder and glory that is Coopers Sparkling Ale.


Weirdest. Beer. Review. Intro. Ever.

Coopers Spark has a special place in the hearts and beer fridges of drinkers worldwide, not just in Australia. The late great English beer writer Michael Jackson (yeah, I know - to be fair, he was using the name before that other singing bloke kicked off) called it Australia's one outstanding contribution to international beer, possibly because the national origin of the beer bong is still under disputation, pavlova-styles, and also because he thought all other Australian beers were untrammelled shite, mainly because he'd tried them. Except, he insisted, for the Spark. The magical, wonderful Spark. And he's absolutely right. That such a brilliant beer - strong, delicate, powerful and zesty all at once - can come from Adelaide, a city as bereft of vibrancy as it is of drinkable tap water, remains a mystery worthy of Warwick Moss coming out of retirement to host a special ep of The Extraordinary. Though the latter quality of its hometown may explain why the finished article is usually cloudier than the first morning of a Lords test match.

Yet to a certain degree the Spark is the forgotten cousin of the Coopers range. Being a hepatically ruinous 5.8% alc/vol straight off the shelf at Unky Dan's, it gets taxed well out of the budgetary range for regular drinking considerations. Its more mainstream green-hued brethren, the Pale, gets more of Coopers' promotional budget - for instance here emblazoned across the flanks of ex-Roosters leaguie Jack Elsegood's championship winning V8 Ute - and turns up on more pub taps than its kin. The focus of the marketeers and the drinkers alike appears to be on the Pale. Which is a shame. The Pale's a good beer, but it's not the Spark.

Now Coopers aficionados can be a punishing lot - as you'd expect for beardy Real Ale enthusiast types, or as close to it as the Australian drinker gets - and there's a whole slew of do's and don'ts meant to follow the Correct Consumption of Coopers, particularly ex-bottle. Temperature of serving around 8-10 Celsius, has to be in a glass, and HAS to be 'rolled' - literally, rolled across the table from side to side prior to pouring in order to agitate the yeasty sludge in the bottom of the bottle, because apparently this is a good thing. This is where the old homebrewer in me comes out, draws a line in the sand, and advises the punishers to fuck the fuck off back the fuck over there fuck ay. Beer is many things. Wonderful, delicious, complex, liberating, wet. One thing it is not meant to be is lumpy. Let the bloody thing stand before you pour it, and decant that shit off. You'll thank me.

There must be something in the water in Adelaide though, apart from sewage, industrial effluent and runoff from the Snowtown bank vault (what too soon?) Another Adelaide brewer, Brewboys have matched the Spark's impressive 5.8% output with an effort of their own - though the percenterage figure is entirely on purpose. GT Lager - 5.8% alc/vol, 35.1 bittering units, and a bunch of other not-quite-legally-actionable presentation cues harking back to the GTHO Falcons of the '60s and '70s, follows on from Charger Lager, their previous heavily oversubscribed tribute to the much cooler Hemi Chargers of the same era. They mightn't have ever won Bathurst but they were ORANGE. ORANGE IS COOL. PARTICULARLY WITH BIG FUCK OFF BLACK STRIPES. YEAH. SORRY I'LL STOP SHOUTING. Granted, this is the epitome of form over function and pretense over contents but IT'S BEER THAT COMES IN A BOX THAT LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING CHARGER. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT. What's it taste like? Fucked if I know. Beer, probably. It's from Adelaide, and it's not Coopers, so it's probably fucking rank.


And yes OK that's not a Charger it's a Pacer. The one that got mostly ruined in ITWPT in the process of being roadtripped up the NZ coast by Angus and the remaining three-quarters of Hayabusa.

What was I on about?

Yeah. So while both are awesome tributes to Strayan muscle car history - about time for that Monaro Bitter, lads - neither GT nor Charger Lager is likely to actually be drinkable, for the following reasons.
(1) Brewing comps frequented by microbreweries are usually easier to rort than an IPL game.
(2) As such, any microbrew without a string of questionably-awarded medals after its name is likely to be genuinely grievous crap. FFS, even Uncle Ted's won a couple of baubles.
(3) The only awards Brewboys have ever won have been for Charger Lager. A bronze. For coolest packaging.
QED, both Charger Lager and the apparently obtainable GT sequel are almost definitely arse frosted with arse. Buy some, pour it down the sink and put the bottles in a display case.

So here's to Coopers Sparkling. The great Australian beer. Particularly when dodgy bargain-basement Enzed supermarket Pak N'Slave have it on spesh for $26 a fifteen.


Now if you'll excuse me I have scientific research to do.

The Doctor is OUT.