REVIEW: Sixpoint Global Warmer & Die Hard

I'm excited about this one. A new beer from one of my all time favorite breweries and one of my all time favorite movies. I knew when I started this whole Christmas beer and movie pairing excursion that I had to check out Sixpoint's newest, Global Warmer, and Die Hard, what might be the definitive American action movie. At first blush, neither is easy to come up with a celluloid or brewed counterpart to. I think I've come up with something though. Let's get to it.

As always, we start with the beer. Global Warmer pours a very pretty hazy scarlet amber with golden highlights. Above the particulate laden elixir is a towering layer of rocky, fluffy off white head that leaves magnificent lacing.

The aromas on this beer are not your typical winter seasonal. Massive notes of sticky, oily hops with hearty additions of citrusy hints of lemon and orange thrown in for good measure. Lest ye believe this beer is all about the hops, there is also a quite a bit of toasty toffee malt going on here as well. As it warms a bit of banana and strawberry become evident as well.

The flavors on Global Warmer mimic the aromas fairly closely. Rich bready notes of caramel malt fullness are contrasted by a punchy resiny bitterness. Fruity complexity comes through in spades. Soft notes of strawberry, banana, pineapple, grape, and apple all contribute to a wonderful fruitcake like character. Global warmer finishes with a light piney bitterness. I really like this beer. Sixpoint does it again.

Now on to Die Hard. There really isn't anything that I don't love about this movie. This movie has gone on to inspire dozens of imitators over the decades but none of them capture the magic of the original. Not even Bruce Willis himself can seem to do it. In the Die Hard sequels John McClane is, for all intents and purposes a superhero. In this he's a man, a mortal, fallible, vulnerable, scared, barefoot man. Albeit a smart, tough, resourceful, determined man. But ultimately just a guy that wants to get home to his family for Christmas and reconcile with his estranged wife (if that doesn't sound like a Christmas movie, I don't know what does). All that is to say that there's a real human story inside of one of the tightest, slickest, action movies ever made. But it really isn't the action that makes this movie shine. It's Argyle playing Christmas in Hollis in the Limo, it's Reginald VelJohnson's sergeant Al Powell, it's "Now I have a machine gun Ho-Ho-Ho, It's Ode to Joy, it's Bonnie Bedelia punching William Atherton in the face, it's every single second Alan Rickman is on the screen, It's "Yippie-ki-yay motherfucker."

Zack Handlen over at the A.V. Club wrote a great pice about how Die Hard Works because it's only Christmas adjacent. Check it out here. There's nothing about this movie that needs it to take place at Christmas for it to work but the trappings of the season enhance it. They raise the stakes, they add flavor. In that same sense, there's nothing about Global Warmer that makes it necessary for it to be a winter seasonal. It isn't loaded with spices, it isn't a viscous hearty ale only to be enjoyed in the dead of winter. It's a great, tasty, heavily hopped ale. Tasty at any time of year, but extra special to be enjoyed at Christmas.

HD