255. Harpoon 100 Barrel Series #30 Island Creek Oyster Stout

More Harpoon! We’re back on that Harpoon tip—this is our seventh from the boys in Boston. We’ve had 100 Barrel Series #28 Glacier ’09 Wet Hop, 100 Barrel Series #27 Helles Blond Bock, Octoberfest, Leviathan Saison Royale, 100 Barrel Series #24 Glacier ’08 Wet Hop and their IPA.

Island Creek Oyster Stout pours a deep brown with red highlights, and has a scrimshaw/whale tusk color head. That’s right, we’re giving you more beautiful maritime references with our Harpoon beer. The nose is roasty with a slight mineral tang, and the beer starts with light roasted and chocolate flavors before moving into mineral and low levels of saltiness in the middle. The finish is dry with a return of some of the roastiness, and is accompanied by a light chalky alkaline chocolate taste that lingers on the palate. Island Creek Oyster Stout has a medium body with some creaminess and tanginess as a part of the mouthfeel. The carbonation is medium, and helps smooth the beer across the body. The roasty flavors do increase with warmth. Island Creek Oyster Stout is an excellent and interesting beer across the board. We’d like to know exactly how many oysters went into the beer, and at what time intervals. We’d also like to know who got to eat all those oysters at the end of brewing. Damn. That would be delicious. So who’s gonna make the next oyster stout?

From the bottle: “This smooth stout is brewed with freshly harvested Island Creek Oysters. The roasted notes of the stout blend beautifully with the mineral flavors of the oysters.”

We figured that this beer needed some old-timey photos, so we went with the sepia tones...

From the Harpoon website: “The idea for the Harpoon 100 Barrel Series Island Creek Oyster Stout came after years of enjoying locally harvested oysters over freshly brewed pints of beer with our friends from Island Creek. Stouts have long been paired with oysters, though seldom brewed with them. This is our take on the age-old tradition.

Brewed by Harpoon brewer Katie Tame, using Island Creek oyster farmer Skip Bennett’s revered Duxbury Bay oysters, this beer has a rich body and smooth mouthfeel derived in part from a combination of roasted barley and chocolate rye malts. The roasted malt notes blend beautifully with the briny, mineral flavors of the Island Creek oysters. An addition of hops adds some bitterness to balance the malt sweetness. This, the 30th installment of the Harpoon 100 Barrel Series, is best enjoyed with a plate full of Island Creek Oysters.

We hope beer and oyster lovers have as much fun drinking it as we had brewing it.”

ABV: 5.5%

IBU: 35

OG: 15° P

Brewed: 1/21/2010
Bottled: 2/5/2010

(3/12/2010)