Sixpoint Resin Double IPA [Beer Review]
Sixpoint Craft Ales, until recently run in all aspects by founder Shane Welch [Read our interview, 5 Questions With Sixpoint's Shane Welch], recently brought on a new, German born and trained brewmaster, Jan Matysiak [Read our interview, 5 Questions With Sixpoint's Jan Matysiak]. While Shane will now focus more on the running the business (hopefully this means more people will get to try delicious Sixpoint beer?), Jan will focus on helping the Sixpoint team to make the most amazing beer that they can! And boy does he have big shoes to fill, as Sixpoint has grown based on the highly experimental and delicious brews they have put out only on tap until the 2011 release of their nano-kegs (what they call cans). Resin Double IPA is the first beer that Jan created, so this should be a good indication of the direction he’s going to take the company. Let’s dive in!
I usually look for double IPAs to be a bit lighter than this one, but Sixpoint’s Resin spills out of the nano-keg a full, clear brick red. On top rests a khaki, dense head. It pours large, but settles to a little over one finger and then just chills that way for what seems like forever.
In one word, all capital letters, this brew smells like one thing and one thing alone: HOPS! I believe we may have said this before about other beers, but I’ve never smelled it quite as literally as this...Resin is like sticking my nose into a giant bag of hops. Just as the name says, the aroma is all resiny, sticky, piney hops. Wow. Just wow.
With a beer of this style as red as this one, I (for right or wrong) will usually assume it’s going to be on the more-malt forward side of double IPAs. And I’m partially right on this one. I say partially, because Resin definitely has a malt base to it that west coast versions of this style don’t even know is possible. The beer is chewy, it’s full on your tongue, it’s almost creamy and the mouthfeel is awesome...before the bitter hits, I’d even say it’s luxurious. But then, here comes the bitter, and the beer changes! You have almost a full second where the malt is winning, then out of nowhere, a hop bite the likes of which few can brew just blindsides you. The bitterness is smooth yet aggressive...easygoing yet rough. And the bitterness lasts and lasts on the back of your tongue. It’s the namesake hop resin, and it just coats your throat after you swallow.
This is a really neat beer! I love what the crew over at Sixpoint, now led on the brewing side by Jan Matysiak, have done here! This is a brew that could easily have been super one dimensional but, instead, they’ve made a nuanced double IPA that is still the hop bomb I hoped for. Definitely check this one out!
I bought a four-pack of 12oz tallboy cans of this craft beer at Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont.
