Christchurch’s Wigram Brewery recently hosted an event to pay tribute to the late Paul Cooper, one of the founding fathers of New Zealand craft brewing. It was a quiet afternoon, but the amount of living history (and a few living fossils) in that bar could have filled a small library.
Being about two generations down the line, I never knew Coops personally, but the more I learned about his legacy, the more I realised just how foundationally he had paved the paths that myself and so many others would walk on our own journeys through the world of beer.
Coops’ favourite was Wigram’s classic Czar Russian Imperial Stout, but as much as I too enjoy that particular drop, it isn’t as they say ‘much of a driver’. So I went for a Wigram Mustang Pale Ale instead, which is about as classic a beer as one can find in the city (and the country, for that matter). It’s old school malt aroma is balanced with crisp citrus and earthy hoppiness, while the palate is full and deliciously bitter. Robust and satisfying pale ale as it used to be. Undeniably and unrepentantly old fashioned, Mustang is brewing history in a glass, and I drink it thankfully.