East Coast Oyster Stout
Big Rock Brewery

Very dark brown in color with some garnet highlights to it when held up to the light, pours with a finger width of light brown colored fine head that has a decent retention to it and leaves a nice clingy lace ring around the glass.

Moderate amount of aroma, sweet malts: molasses and chocolate with hints of coffee and sea salt.

Dark strong coffee flavor forward moderately bitter, a very faint sweetness to it with a ghostly hint of salted caramel.

Finish is bitter almost scorched coffee that lingers along with a salt note that picks up on the back end along with a faint umami quality that makes me think of soy sauce giving if a slightly bitter aftertaste with a lightly briny tang.

Heavy bodied with a nice smooth mouth feel to it but more carbonation to it then I expected with a slightly higher then average amount to it.

 

 

330ml bottle, part of the Canada 150 variety pack from Big Rock that celebrates our nation's upcoming birthday via 6 brews that represent the diversity of said land. Once again, I think this brewery misses the point - oyster stouts aren't actually supposed to have the shellfish in them, are they?

This beer pours a clear, very dark brown cola colour, with two fingers of puffy, rocky, and mildly bubbly tan head, which leaves a bit of random streaky lace around the glass as things evenly subside.

It smells of gritty and lightly toasted caramel malt, a further free-range ashiness, faintly fishy saltwater, ethereal bittersweet cocoa powder, and very faint earthy, leafy, and weedy green hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, bready and doughy caramel malt, dark chocolate, more wispy char, weak meaty ocean notes, ephemeral cafe-au-lait, and a still hard to discern earthy, musty, and dead floral 'verdant' hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its merely supportive frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and not particularly smooth, with that ashy character making for a tough slog through my various palates. It finishes quite dry, the roasted malt and weak coffee notes carrying the day.

Overall, this is sort of a weird-seeming offering, whose problem I can't quite put my finger on. It's not the seafood component, but rather a general mouthfeel concern, one which had me nearly gagging at times. Yeah, not my particular cup of East Coast tea, I'm sorry to say, b'y!