Oyster Stout Returns--Well, at Least to Jersey.....

Oyster Stout is a style I first ran into nearly two decades ago at the Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis, shortly after they started brewing as a brewpub and long before they went 90% music hall and 10% brewpub.  I loved Fordham's draft-only Blue Point Oyster Stout, in part because it had a wonderful, full-bodied, and slightly chalky flavor with a full ale character and CO2 dispensing (none of this trying to be a Guinness and pouring it through a nitro tap).  Sadly, Fordham basically did away with Oyster Stout some time ago--competing with Guinness with a similar beer pumped through a nitro tap as Genius Stout was apparently more important to them.  (Legend has it that the first batch they did had actual oyster shells in it, but later batches got away with just a carefully controlled dose of gypsum and other minerals.)

The style may be back with Flying Fish of Cherry Hill, NJ, who has just introduced their latest in their "Exit" series of specialty beers, Exit 1 Oyster Stout.  Lew Bryson led me to Jeff Linkous' Beer-Stained Letter blog, complete with his self-produced video (above) about a territory on the Delaware Bay I've explored quite a great deal as a railroad historian.

Anyone headed Joisey way, grab me a bottle of that stuff.  Please.  I beg you.