35 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
828-350-0505
E-mail: billy@oysterhousebeers.com
Website: http://www.oysterhousebeers.com
Hours: Daily, 5 P.M.–11 P.M.
Owner: Amy Beard
Brewmaster: Billy Klingel
Opened:2009
Regular beer lineup: Dirty Blonde, Patton Ave. Pale Ale, Upside Down Brown, Moonstone Stout, India Pale Ale
OysterHouse Brewing Company might be one of the most nontraditional breweries in North Carolina—or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s not really a brewpub so much as it is a seafood restaurant that happens to make its own beer.
Billy Klingel, the brewer at OysterHouse, has worked at The Lobster Trap since before it was open. He also happens to be “a geeked-out homebrewer,” in his own words. Tres Hundertmark, the original general manager and executive chef at The Lobster Trap, used to go to oyster-shucking tournaments, in which people compete to shuck the most oysters in a certain amount of time. Hundertmark is a champion oyster shucker. After returning from a competition in Boston back in 2006, he told Billy about a beer he had heard of while he was there: an oyster stout.
The brewing system behind the bar at The Lobster Trap, a.k.a. OysterHouse Brewing Company
“I had lost my overall obsession with homebrewing by that point. It wasn’t because I stopped loving doing it, I just didn’t have the time,” Klingel says. “But there we were, with a cooler with a dozen different varieties of oysters in it on any given day, and I thought, Well, this is my chance. Every homebrewer dreams about making the jump to having their own brewery. I had always had this vision that I would have this little pizza place, and we would make our own beer, and I might not be a millionaire, but I’d get by, and it would be great. I thought, Well, it’s not really the way my dream was written out, but it’s certainly a great way to start. So I got a little obsessed again.”
Over the course of the next year, he brewed 60 or so batches of homebrew, and at least 50 of them were oyster stouts. He tweaked the recipe each time until he thought it was just right. He brought the final product in to his boss, Amy Beard, founder of The Lobster Trap. “At that point,” says Klingel, “Amy was a Bud Select drinker. So for her to take a drink of something you can’t see through and say, ‘That’s good!’ was pretty great.”
The brewing system frames the entrance to the kitchen at The Lobster Trap.
Klingel told Beard his plan and came up with a sample budget, and The Lobster Trap soon began to make its own beer. He originally tried to find a three-barrel system in hopes that he could devise some way of fitting a small brewhouse and fermenters into the restaurant, but he ended up getting a half-barrel “Brew Magic” system built from half-barrel kegs—essentially an elaborate homebrewing system. He makes about 12 gallons of beer at a time.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are brew days. Klingel starts brewing at about 7 A.M. and tries to be done by 2 P.M., before the restaurant really gets going. Almost all of the beers Klingel makes in the restaurant are oyster stouts. He has contracted out other styles at French Broad Brewing Co. in Asheville. He goes to its facility about once a month and brews for the day, filling all of his own kegs with beers for the restaurant. And while they’re popular and good, nothing really stands up to the oyster stout that The Lobster Trap has become famous for.
Each batch of his oyster stout contains about five pounds of unshucked oysters. “The shell is the best part,” Klingel says. While he has experimented with using different varieties of oysters, he’s not sure that they make a significant difference. The main factor, he says, is the size. Some oysters are big and some small, so while the flavor might not change much, the cost of the beer might change dramatically.
• When it happens: September
• Where it happens: Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Asheville
• Ticket price: About $40
• Features: 40 breweries from around the state and country, as well as regionally and nationally known bluegrass musicians
• Notes: This is a seven-hour-long music festival. Tickets sell out almost immediately each year.
Many people are skeptical of oyster stout, says Klingel. “They have a hard time trying it. But I tell them, ‘It doesn’t taste like oysters. The only reason you know there are oysters in there is because I’m telling you in case you have an allergy to shellfish.’ ” Nonetheless, the brewery business inside The Lobster Trap has ultimately been a success. “One day, I looked out here, and this was probably a few months after we started making beer, and the whole bar was full, all the seats were taken, and everybody at the bar except for two people had a pint of stout. This was old, young, men, women. And I thought, I have just won.”
Klingel says that, in the future, he’d love to see the brewery expand beyond the cramped kitchen space of The Lobster Trap. “My five-year plan—maybe—is to take this brand and these beers someplace bigger. The day that I’ll be making 12 barrels of beer instead of 12 gallons, I’ll be really happy.”