Resin
Mills Brewing

What happens when you put 100 bitterness units (akin to a bracing west coast double IPA) into a traditional turbid mash wort?

We have always taken inspiration from the wide ranging flavours our neighbouring west-country cider makers are afforded by the huge array of cider apples grown locally. We aim to brew an equally wide range of worts, to give us an equivalent array of flavours from which to blend finished beers.

Taking this to one natural extremity, the worts that became Resin were made using a high gravity turbid mash, and the traditional lightly-bitter aged hops were swapped for sticky, aromatic, powerfully bitter US grown varieties.

After a night in the coolship, the wort was run into three small oak barrels, where it was left to ferment for 16 months. During fermentation, the bitter hop compounds restricted growth of lactic acid producing bacteria. This, along with the relatively short time in barrel, produced a level of acidity closer to a "normal" beer than a traditional spontaneously fermented example.

The finished blend was dry-hopped with the suitably-resinous New Zealand grown Pacific Jade hops, before bottle conditioning. The resulting beer is surprisingly clean (funk will come with time in bottle), heady and rich initially, with citrus, pepper, oak and apples through the middle, and a long dry finish punctuated by a crystal clear bitter snap.