When you're a kid or an idiot, you lack the experience and imagination necessary to realize that there's more than one way to skin a cat or detail a hot dog. That's why so many young folk and dumb folk get so exercised when they see someone skinning a cat tail-first or putting ketchup on a hot dog.
Men tend to be much more pedantic and narrow-minded about these trivial matters, and I write about traditionally dude-type things for a living, so that means I've spent two-thirds of my online life avoiding fights about whether soy sauce should be refrigerated and what the appropriate means of execution is for anyone who dares shake a martini. Sometimes I join the fray, either to take my own idiocy out for a stroll or to fake it in order to maintain good standing in the Infernal Order of Men With Firm Opinions on Shit That Doesn't Matter at All, but for the most part I try to respect other idiots' rights to their own bad opinions.
This hard-earned magnanimity (that's what we tired and enlightened people call our apathy, you see) prevents me from berating you for defiling your home with an artificial Christmas tree. I always assumed that most people use real trees, because my parents did, and my efforts to reforest my own living room every December—wreaths and mini trees and grocery-store poinsettias—are never sufficient, but always organic.
I didn't realize my commitment to authenticity (and gratuitous nature-wasting) put me in a noble minority, but it turns out that nearly 80 percent of American Christmas trees are fake. I realize artificial trees have plenty going for them—convenience, price, cleanliness, customizability, maybe even environmental efficiency. But, damn, man. If you use the real thing, your house will smell like a Christmas tree! I can't fathom why anyone would pass that up.
But the open part of my mind accepts that a great and awful many of you forgo planting a real, live dead tree in your homes, either because you use fake trees or no trees at all, so I come bearing a solution to your sensory deprivation. Whether you don't celebrate Christmas at all due to conflicting religious rituals, or you celebrate it very poorly due to reliance on a plastic tree, you can take comfort in knowing that sprinkling a bit of the right double IPA in the corners can make your house smell just as good as a right and proper Christian's.
So get yourself some Sixpoint Resin. The brewery refuses to call it a double IPA, but they admit that if they were gauche enough to label their beers, DIPA might fit. Resin is a sweet, sticky, boozy (9.1 percent alcohol-by-volume), bitter beer that smells like a pine forest invaded a caramel-covered-citrus grove.
Resin pours a clearer, brighter gold color than expected. The aroma differs from many double IPAs in that it's slightly funky and feral up front before sweet lemon candy, pine, and black pepper emerge along with a healthy dose of caramel malt. If you get a fresh can, tropical flavors of peach, pineapple, and mango will be stronger than the potent grapefruit character in this carefully balanced beauty, which showcases deep, almost roasty caramel throughout before the sharp, dry, evergreen finish.
Let Sixpoint Resin set your house straight. It's sold at a reasonable price in a perfect container (about $14 for a six-pack of 12-ounce cans), it tastes great, the high alcohol content is well hidden, and it smells just a little bit like God's kid being born.
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Will Gordon loves life and tolerates dissent. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., and some of his closest friends have met Certified Cicerones. Find him on Twitter @WillGordonAgain. Image by Jim Cooke.
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