chumprock

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I just had an oyster stout at the Porter House in London last week.

What an amazing beer. It doesn't taste fishy, or even briny really. It just imparts this wonderful extra little taste that I doubt most people would be able to identify without a hint or two.

I'd be interested to know how this turns out!

EoinMag

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It adds a certain something that you wouldn't be inclined to recognise that is true, but it's vaguely briney I found myself.

ohiobrewtus

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Sweet! Can't wait to hear how it turns out.

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Reverend JC

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Ohhh, you will be getting one.

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MacBruver

Recipes 

I just went to their website to see if they had any info on the beer, and boy do they ever! Almost a recipe.

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Matt Up North

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well, learn something new everyday. I must have been slightly misinformed then.

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IamSauce4

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Would love to know how this turned out. I'm feeling inspired

KPatton

Recipes 

As a geologist, I would not expect much mineralized calcium carbonate would be imparted to the beer by boiling oyster shells in it. A lot of the assertions I have read here sound more like marketing hype down through the decades.

I can say that having read The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky, about the history of the Hudson River/NYC oystery, the largest and the most prolific in the world, I would think that oysters were added TO the beer much earlier than the 1930's.

The Thames estuary was also a huge prolific oystery providing oysters to London as the poor man's meat for centuries before sewage killed it off. NYC oysters were being imported to Britain and France in the 1800's due to the decreasing availability. The NYC middens, ancient oyster shell heaps started by the Native Americans and added to by the colonists, show, by digging down to the lower levels, that oysters weighing up to 4 pounds(!!) were at one time harvested by the indians. Can you imagine a oyster as big as four 16 ounce steaks? Anyway, oysters are what the colonists in N England and the poor in London survived on.

Food for thought, uncooked oysters can be a transmitter of typhoid since they cand live, eat and breath in water contaminated with typhoid infected sewage. They were responsible for outbreaks in NYC back in the day.

Oysters were shipped nationwide in wooden barrels, salted and fresh in the 1800's and you could get oysters on the menu in places like St. Louie, Dodge City and Denver (real oysters, not the Rocky Mt. type...lol).

My point is, oysters were so cheap and plentiful and were considered poor man's food, I don't find it hard to believe that some enterprising brewer fortified his brew with oysters. After all remember the American working man's practice of adding a raw egg to his morning or lunch time beer?

KPatton

Recipes 

Here is something that makes sense and would not be so wasteful of a fine tasting seafood. In the description of the Harpoon Oyster Stout they say that originally in New Zealand, shelled oysters were boiled, as in cooked in the boiling wort, thereby opening the shells for consumption, and releasing the oyster liquor into the wort. This would allow the brewers to eat the wort flavored oysters while adding a certain something to the wort in the form of the protein rich oyster liquor. This technique is something easily replicated at home with shelled oysters and a wire steaming or boiling basket. Very similar to steaming or boiling clams. Just dunk them in the boiling wort until the invertebrates die a hideous death and are ready for consumption.