When I start talking about oyster stouts, people tend to get a little uneasy. I’m not sure why, but the notion of drinking beer made with oysters seems unappealing to them, verily even those that like to eat oysters. Here’s a little secret, though. Classic English oyster stouts don’t usually contain oysters at all. Swales Whitstable Oyster Stout is an example, named more for the fact oysters and stout pair so well together. For my part, I love a good stout with fried oysters. I fondly recall enjoying pints of Guinness with my father, pairing the beer with his famous homemade fried oysters.

Some oyster stouts really are brewed with oysters, though, and in that vein I can tell you that Wynkoop Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is really brewed with genuine Rocky Mountain oysters. What’s that you say? There’s no ocean near the Rockies? You are absolutely correct. There are a lot of bulls, though.

If you don’t already know, Rocky Mountain oysters are said to be delicacy, and they are made from the testicles of bull calves. Generally, they are sliced, breaded and deep fried. The final product looks something like fried oysters, though I am not sure they taste much alike. I suspect I will never know.

Wynkoop says the following about the beer on their blog:

The new hand-canned version of Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout is being sold in unique twopacks of labeled 12-ounce cans…..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.)

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.

Wynkoop Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout says right on the can that this is a “Stout brewed with bull testicles”. They also tell you it has notes of “roasted barley, coffee, and nuts.” Funny, that. A two-pack cans will run you $5.99, which is a fair price for a limited bacth brew of this nature. This is a formidable stout, too, at 7.5% alcohol by volume, so one can should really do you. If you have the stones to try it…..

Wynkoop Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout pours to a very dark black but not opaque color with a medium to light creamy tan head and a pleasingly roasty, lightly nutty nose. Taking a sip, the beer has a big chocolaty palate up front with suggestions of coffee, brown sugar, licorice and USDAA Certified Grade A Beef. OK, I’m kidding about the beef, but this beer is certainly rich and delicious and sweet, and it finishes slightly sweet too with an alcohol burn at the last. It is very much bigger than your average oyster stout, and I think it’s the rich chocolaty smoothness of texture in the beer that I’m enjoying most.

Rogue Oyster Cloyster Stout is the first oyster stout that I ever tried that was actually brewed with oysters (as far as I can recall anyway), and I remarked that the oysters really didn’t add anything to it. I think that’s true here as well with Wynkoop Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout. The testicles didn’t add any flavor for me. Be that as it may, somewhere in the western United States, a bull is singing soprano so that you could enjoy this beer. The least you can do is try a can.

4.5 stars, but I’ll round up to 5 for the novelty and pun opportunities.