December 2011. Nutritious, delicious, and fit for a Russian empress.

The pairing of oysters and a dry, dark, stout beer is traceable back to nineteenth century England, when both were available on the cheap and became a bit of a craze among theatre-going Londoners. Stout (also known by the somewhat interchangeable term, ‘porter’) is a rich, black/brown beer that is heavy with hops and often sports a high alcohol content. The name porter actually came into use a bit earlier than stout, and referenced the laborers among whom it was a popular beverage. But, as so often happens with local, working-class favorites, the humble stout attracted the attention of the bourgeoisie.

The robust stout even attracted the attention of the court of Catherine the Great. The History and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Saviour, Southwark, a book detailing the goings-on in the area of Thrale’s Brewery, where some of the first notable stouts were brewed says, “The Empress of All Russia is indeed so partial to porter that she has ordered repeatedly very large quantities for her own drinking and that of her court.” And so a humble drink of the British working man garnered international recognition. The high alcohol content and liberal use of hops in what would become known as ‘Russian Imperial Stout’ extended its shelf life and allowed the product to survive the long trip from England to Saint Petersburg.

Stranger still is the way in which the dockworkers’ drink with a regal apellation becomes interwined with the humble oyster. Brewers have alternately been using oyster shells in the brewing process (to help clarify their beer) or adding oysters themselves, (to create a more nutritional beverage) for a long time. Think of the world-famous Irish brewery’s old ad campaign “Guinness is Good For You.” All this is a long way of saying that when Kerry Yoes produced his award-winning Imperial Louisiana Oyster Stout, he was not acting without precedent.

Yoes is a computer programmer by day, but in his leisure time he engages in the strange alchemy of home brewing, practiced from a small brick shed behind his Zachary home. His finest creation, and the one that attracted the attention of microbrew powerhouse Abita Brewing, is a riff on that durable Russian Imperial Stout that got the Romanovs so excited. Drawing partly on history and partly on a desire to utilize local ingredients, Yoes added some Louisiana oysters to his boiling kettle of mash and brought forth a rich, complex beer that is now available on tap through Abita’s Select line of small batch beers.

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