Wynkoop Releases First Cans of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout
Alright, it’s official: we have released a hand-canned version of our world-famous Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout.
This is another seminal moment in our 25 years of small-batch liquid art.
As you may recall, RMOS Stout made its debut during last year’s Great American Beer Festival. The draft-only beer earned press and consumer interest from around the world and led to long lines for the beer at our GABF table.
The new hand-canned version of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is being sold in unique twopacks of labeled 12-ounce cans. It’ll be available at select retailers in our Denver distribution area.
For beer lovers outside of the Denver area, a limited amount of the beer will be available through the www.letspour.com web site starting March 11.
We’re certain that this is the ballsiest canned beer in the world. We believe it’s also the nation’s first twopack of cans.
The beer is made in tiny 8-barrel batches (instead of our usual, already small 20-barrel batch) and is the first in our new Even Smaller Batch Series of beers. (A barrel of beer equals 31 gallons and two standard 15.5 gallon kegs.)
Head brewer Andy Brown developed the beer’s recipe.
A meaty foreign-style stout, Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is made with Colorado base malts, roasted barley, seven specialty malts, Styrian Goldings hops, and 25 pounds of freshly sliced and roasted bull testicles.
Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is an assertive, viscous stout with a rich brown/black color, a luscious mouthfeel and deep flavors of chocolate, espresso and nuts. The beer sports a savory, umami-like note and a roasty dry finish.
Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is 7.5% ABV and 3 BPBs. (That’s balls per barrel.)
The beer came to life last fall after the enthusiastic response to our 2012 April Fools Day spoof video in which we claimed to have made the beer. I got the video joke idea and wrote up the script after sampling a traditional oyster stout (made with ocean-grown kind) by the fine folks at Odell Brewing.
The video — at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1fV3edEdfE — has over 100,000 views on Youtube.
Note the stellar performances by Andy, our former brewer Brad Landman (he’s now at Vine Street Pub) and the rest of our staff. Gabe Dohrn (a part-time Wynkoop staffer and founder of Avavision Media) was the video wizard behind the camera and did the exceptional edit job for the piece.
Folks who got the video joke thought it was a hilarious idea. Many of those who missed the joke were eager to try the beer. So we figured the only way we could top the humor of the video and make those stout drinkers happy was to actually create the beer.
We canned approximately 100 cases of the beer in this initial canning run of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. The beers are hand canned on a table-top canning machine from Cask Brewing Systems.
We’ve packaged RMOS in blank, unprinted aluminum cans that we label with a two-part label akin to those used on glass bottles. This method enables us to produce super-small batches of canned beer and avoid the 95,000 can minimum for painted cans from our can supplier.
Look for these nutty new twofers in our best Denver area stores. Have a ball!