I'm down in Hilton Head with my family at the Marriott Port Royal timeshare they've had since '96-'97. Nice place to hang out and lay low. Therese never anything going on, and the island hasn't been hit by a hurricane in recorded history, leading to an island heavily populated by live oaks which I think are gorgeous. But in other news, BEER! So on our way here we stopped in total wine to pick up the essentials and I picked up a couple I thought I would write reviews on, this oyster stout being on of them. It's brewed by Holy City brewing out of Charleston, SC. A brewery started by four men, two of whom were rickshaw pullers, another the owner of a defunct biodiesel business, and the fourth a brewing school graduate. This is one of their seasonal brews (their website simply says "Oyster season"), It is an Irish dry stout brewed with 2 bushels of Bowen's Island oysters per every 15 gallons of beer.
The can is a simple 12.oz polished aluminum with a glued on plastic label instead of the usual can-printed. This allows them to have an almost three dimensional image on their black and gold graphic of a man harvesting oysters and won't ruin the label if you stick it in a cooler (opposed to paper labels). Time to pop this sucker open.
Froth expands from the can, they seem to have filled this all the way to the brim. It has a heavy, roasted malt nose from the mouth, we'll see if it's the same in the glass.
I acquired a new short tulip glass I'll be using for this review. It's labeled with Bell's Hop slam ale, one of the better hop grenades in my opinion. But not my favorite, as my regular readers may remember.
There is practically no head, bu I must say that this beer is so dark that the glass is now a bulbous mirror. You can barely see bubbles coming up against you're own reflection. It has a lighter, almost fruity scent from the glass, but still clearly roasted malts. On first sip, salty, dry, kind of tart with kind of a fruity finish. I don't think I've had a beer that was salty like this. It tastes like you took you're dry to the beach and accidentally got a touch of salt water splashed into it. Which is sort of what they did, I suppose, but intentionally, with copious amounts of molluscs. Mouth feel is just a little acidic, but otherwise smooth, sort of a medium body. There it is, you have to get used to the saltiness first, but then the oysters come out. It reminds me of the soda Moxie, if y'all have had that. I miss that stuff, it's so hard to get in the south.
My dad just drank my founders breakfast stout. He grabbed it thinking it was one of the six pack of dirty bastard, also by founders so they bottles shape and cap were the same. I've lost quite a few beers this way. I need some kind of secret hiding place for beer. someplace I can keep them cool for an extended period of time. Maybe I should bury them in a taped up cooler in the back yard, mark it like a grave and come back a few years later. Other than that, my brother got me hooked on settlers of CATAN. I love the fact that the way you set the board up will completely change how you need to play the game, it's addictive.
Final thoughts. It's a good beer, I wouldn't want to drink it all the time, but its worth one a season. I give it my blurry seal of approval.
