The Cyclone is back! Resin marks 300th brew with the return of its most viral beer

Resin Brewing is marking its 300th brew with the limited return of a summer favourite ahead of the long weekend.

The Bulli brewery and pub created the Cyclone Cryopop Hazy Pale beer – inspired by the fruity flavours of the popular ice block – in 2022, unaware of the impact it would make online and in the community.

Director Brendan Dowd said the idea originally came from a meeting in which the team were spitballing ideas about new beers and the flavours and experiences the community enjoyed.

“The Cyclone one was just us wanting to do something different and sitting around and chatting and weird things come to your brain I think,” he said.

“I’ve got a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old and they have to have an ice-block in the freezer at all times, so it probably came from something like that.”

But when experimenting with unique brews there’s not a lot of room for error, with each batch creating 1000 litres.

“We don’t have a pilot brewery,” Brendan said. “A lot of bigger breweries will have a small pilot brewery where the brewers just go and have fun and try things out.

“So you never know with those sorts of things but the easy thing to do with that is just to pour half a pint, get a quarter of a Cyclone and throw it in there and let it dissolve and see what it tastes like.”

And their instincts were bang on, with the Cyclone beer becoming hugely successful both in person and online.

To mark their latest milestone, the team decided to give the community a throwback to the unique concoction.

“Wanting to bring it back was mainly because it was such a popular beer both on tap but also socially,” Brendan said.

“Our first reel of it just went viral – it was the most shares we’d ever had and it was just a really cool feeling the way that happened.

“So when we were thinking what beer we would do for 300 it just kind of made sense to do something that everyone wanted.”

And while it’s set to be as popular on tap, as people enjoy the public holiday, they’ve also made it more accessible to people who want to drink at home.

“We didn’t can too much of it in the first run so a lot of people missed out, so we’ve canned quite a bit of it this time,” Brendan said.

Resin has been open for almost four years and has become renowned for not only their delicious and diverse beers but also the pub atmosphere which helps set them apart from many others in the region.

“We’re probably different to the majority of the other breweries in the Illawarra in the way that we’re more known as a brew pub where people come in and eat for the location where some others are in a warehouse and their focus is package beers, where our focus is getting people in here to drink out of the taps,” Brendan said.

During this time they’ve seen interest spike in local brews and the community wanting to support those in their own backyard, but Brendan said what was in demand was still constantly evolving.

“There’s been a big change over the past 5 to 10 years of people wanting to drink local stuff which is great but tastes change at all times so you’ve got to keep up with things,” Brendan said.

“Two or three years ago everyone wanted to drink a big hazy IPA whereas you see now it’s going back to the easier pale ales and lagers are becoming popular again, and sours were big five years ago but they’ve come back down.”

Resin has managed to satisfy loyal customers by staying on brand with a consistent but vast range of core beers mixed to ensure they meet the needs of every taste bud and can quench every thirst.

“I think for us, we’ve never really gone with the trends so much; we’ve always just had a really consistent board where we have one of kind of everything.”

But when they do shake it up with brews like the Cyclone, the messages start rolling in and with wholesalers already interested in cans and the venue also hosting music and long-weekend events, you don’t want to leave it too long if you want to try it before it runs out.

“It could be on tap for four or five weeks or it could be really popular and sell out really quickly – it’s just that time of year,” Brendan said.

To find out more or purchase cans online visit the Resin Brewing website.