BEER Appalachia – Oskar Blues Brewery

In the Oskar Blues Brewery edition of BEER Appalachia, we sample and review three beers that have diverse appeal: Mama’s Little Yellow Pils, Ten FIDY Imperial Stout, and BA21 Volume Seven. Brilliant Stream’s Beer Appalachia series posts occasional videos about beer available in Appalachia. Oskar Blues operates a brewery in Brevard, North Carolina. Tune in and enjoy.

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I recently met with some Oskar Blues Brewery folks while attending the Beer Now conference and was pleased to hear their continued interest in the West Virginia market. It’s been a while since we reported on them , so we decided to do a little update and tasting. Oskar Blues provided us the samples of the two stouts we tasted. Oskar Blues produces its beer at three U.S. breweries — one in North Carolina, and the other two in Colorado and Texas. They are known as the first craft brewery to package their beer in cans. Their Dale’s Pale Ale has long been a leading craft beer in the grocery store retail channel.

Our Oskar Blues Brewery beer tasting

Our tasting begins with an Oskar Blues fave, the Mama’s Little Yellow Pils. Introduced in 2009, this was one of the early craft lagers that helped create the passion and appreciation for high quality, crispy lagers that lives on to today. Called a Bohemian-style Pilsner, the beer includes both pilsner and honey males. It’s traditionally hopped with Saaz and Aramis hops, giving it plenty of Old World flavor along with 33 IBUs. At 4.7% ABV, its crushable.

Produced since 2007, Ten FIDY has become part of America’s beer lexicon. At 10.5% ABV, this Imperial Stout is called a” behemoth of burly malt flavor” The grain bill includes chocolate and dark roasted malts as well as Munich malt, caramel malt, and oats. The flavors of the beer tend toward flavors of chocolate-covered caramel and espresso. It’s rich and expressive, yet smooth in the mouth.

Like most craft breweries these days, Oskar Blues produces a changing lineup of seasonal and specialty beer. We taste one of those specialty beers in BA21 Vol. 7 (11.5% ABV). This beer is the newest edition of Oskar Blues’ barrel-aging program, which began in 2020 and continues to produce limited release barrel-aged beers with unique flavor combinations. They tell us that they add graham crackers to this imperial sweet stout, which helps give it “a biscuity backbone that stands up to months of aging in whiskey barrels.” It also includes added chocolate and cherry.

Oskar Blues Brewery is part of the Canarchy Craft Beer Collective, which also includes Perrin, Cigar City, and a few others. Oskar Blues has been a member of the Appalachian family of breweries since 2012. I visited the Oskar Blues Brewery in Brevard several years back and posted this report when the brand entered the WV market.