Four entries in, and we already find our first beer that no longer exists, as at the time of the Great Uploading in October 2010. I had to check online to make sure this actually did exist, and I wasn’t just drunkenly misrecording the regular Best Extra Stout.

Verbatim: Cooper’s Special Old Stout. 375ml, 6.8%, $3 or so, at home with bangers and mash. ”Expressly cellar aged”, whatever that means. Dark, not-lasting bubbles. No sharp bitterness. Light coffee flavour. Smooth for a stout. Bottle cond..

Afterthoughts, October 2010: The commercial description (online at RateBeer.com) calls this the “worlds first aged stout”. Which seems implausible. And again calls out the brewery’s strange relationship with the apostrophe. The family name is simply Cooper. I’ve met the latest heir-in-charge, Tim Cooper. But they seem determined to neither be Cooper’s Brewery nor even Coopers’ Brewery. It’s a bit strange.