Sixpoint's Sexy Cans Coming to Chicago

By Paul Schneider in Food on Mar 28, 2012 6:20PM

Photo: Michael Harlan Turkell and Eli Neugeboren

Beer geeks rejoice! Sixpoint, one of the Northeast's best craft breweries, will hit shelves and taps in Chicago next month. Craft-centric beer wholesaler Windy City Distribution announced this week that it will add the Brooklyn-based brewery to its portfolio, with an official launch on April 13th.

The foray into Chicago brings Sixpoint founder and president Shane Welch's beer life full circle. A native of Wisconsin, Welch caught the craft beer bug and started homebrewing when he was in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Many of Sixpoint's recipes are adaptations of beers Welch was serving at basement parties during his Badger years.

Sixpoint is only seven years old, but its innovative approach has already developed a strong reputation among craft beer drinkers. Their beers defy standard style descriptions; take Sweet Action, for example. It's somewhere between a pale ale, a wheat beer, and a cream ale. Or their winter seasonal Diesel. It combines the roasted, chocolatey character of American stout with the resinous flavor and aroma of west coast IPAs.

In Chicago, you can expect to see the year-round core lineup - Sweet Action, Bengali Tiger, Righteous Ale, The Crisp, and Resin - in cans, as well as rotating seasonals in cans and on draft. We're most looking forward to Sixpoint's two draft-only specialty lines: the Spice of Life single-hop series and the Mad Scientists experimental series.

We'll be following Sixpoint through their website and on Facebook, and Twitter for details on the launch festivities. In the meantime we're hoping for similar news from Deschutes in Bend, Oregon and Surly in Minneapolis. And we know it will probably never happen, but damn, wouldn't it be nice to have New Glarus in town?