How to make beer with oysters?
Coming from the wild Bulgarian West, I obviously got excited when I heard that my restaurant was organizing a tour of the local brewery. It was my first year working on Nantucket and I guess I was literally trying to soak up the American culture.
While I was carefully listening about how the fermentation process happens, our tour guide started pouring one of their beers. He said it was their oyster stout (dark beer, rich in flavor). Excuse me? Beer with actual oysters?
Being the daredevil that I am, I took a sip. It did not taste nearly as funky as I thought. With their minerality, the oysters seem to give a rounder taste to the beer. The mollusks seemed to really complement the beer, much like milk smooths out the bitterness of a cup of coffee. But what do you go through to make a beverage like that? Let’s find out!
There are five basic steps that go into brewing any type of beer. First is malting the grains. The beverage is most often made from barley, however, wheat, oats, and even corn could be added to uncover distinct flavor profiles. However, as our friends from National Geographic say in a special episode dedicated to brewing (The Perfect Beer), we have to “malt” our barley first. This fancy term means that the barley kernels have to be soaked in water for a couple of days to begin to germinate. The process is then stopped and the barley has to be dried out by roasting. This procedure allows the barley to produce the complex sugars that will eventually turn into alcohol.
Second is mashing the malt. We have to run our kernels through a milling machine that would crack the grains. By doing so, we are releasing the starch that is trapped inside. Then, we bring the mixture in hot water that helps the grains release their natural enzymes. In turn, these catalysts transform the complex sugars into the simpler ones that yeast will, later on, eat and turn into alcohol. What we are left with at the end of this process is a sticky brown liquid called wort.
Some brewers, like Joel Rea, a home-brewer who became known for his unique recipes, use whole oysters even at this stage. Why would he put oyster shells in there? According to The Splendid Table, an American culinary radio, the shells help clarify and refine the beer. Small particles that make the liquid muddy-looking attach themselves to the shells. After the boiling, we must immediately take out the oysters and eat them because they are perfectly cooked.
Third is boiling and hopping. Now comes the perfect moment to pop the hops into the wort. Then, we bring the whole mixture to a boil. By doing so, we sterilize the beer but also help the hop release the active agent that brings out the bitter taste and preserves the beverage. Just 15 minutes before the boil ends, we put our shucked oysters into a mesh bag and add it to the mixture. We could even go further by pouring some of the oyster liquor in there. Yumm!
Fourth is fermentation. After the boiling, we should pour our wort into a fermentation tank where it is cooled down. What we do next is to add yeast that does all the magic. This agent literally devours the sugars in the wort and creates alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process, however, is the lengthiest; it could take up to a few months, depending on the type of beer. As science journalist, Cynthia McKelvey, says in an interview, the whole step could be repeated by moving the beer into a clean tank and letting the yeast continue to eat sugars and convert into ethanol and bubbles. This will, in turn, result in a “cleaner and crisper flavor to the beer”.
Fifth is bottling. What the director of The American Homebrewers Association, Gary Glass, recommends we do before we bottle is to add some corn sugar into our beer. In this way, the stout will continue to carbonate while in the bottle. We are essentially continuing to feed the yeast. Although this step is strongly recommended for homebrews, most companies force carbonate under pressure with carbon dioxide. They do this for consistency and because it takes much less time.
And there you have it, your unique oyster stout! And don’t wonder long with what to pair it, some Nantucket oysters are your best bet!
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Anna Dimitrova is a fourth-year Mass Communication student at the American University in Bulgaria. She chose this topic because of her interest in brewing, sparked by a brewery tour she made on Nantucket, MA, USA.
