So if the way the Coopers stout didn’t stack up yesterday was a surprise of the unpleasant kind, today’s beer, Tooheys Old, was very much a pleasant surprise.

Even more so because the only reason I chose to include it was so I could make a crappy joke about how it’s an old Old. See, high-class humour when you visit Beer Is Your Friend.

This beer carries a date of 03/05/06, which I think means when it was bottled. So that makes this Old about seven years old. That might be a baby in aged beer terms but, on the other hand, it is a mainstream beer and my perception of mainstream beers is that they’re not built to last.

And yet, last is just what this dark ale did. It had the same jet black colour when I poured it into my glass. On the nose was pretty much the same chocolate and coffee aromas I would get off a fresh bottle of the stuff.

But, as I’ve learned this week, the acid test is in the flavour. Apart from the teeniest smidge of wateriness, this Old stood up remarkably well indeed. As far as this aged beer week goes, it’d be the best of the beers I swiped from my parents’ coolroom.

And much better than the West Coast Cooler I originally intended to end this week with because I thought it’d be funny. Jeez, am I glad I didn’t do that.