We develop a general framework in the renormalization-group (RG) method for extracting a mesoscopic dynamics from an evolution equation by incorporating some excited (fast) modes as additional components to the invariant manifold spanned by zero modes. We call this framework the doublet scheme. The validity of the doublet scheme is first tested and demonstrated by taking the Lorenz model as a simple three-dimensional dynamical system; it is shown that the two-dimensional reduced dynamics on the attractive manifold composed of the would-be zero and a fast modes are successfully obtained in a natural way. We then apply the doublet scheme to construct causal hydrodynamics as a mesoscopic dynamics of kinetic theory, i.e., the Boltzmann equation, in a systematic manner with no ad-hoc assumption. It is found that our equation has the same form as Grad’s thirteen-moment causal hydrodynamic equation, but the microscopic formulae of the transport coefficients and relaxation times are different. In fact, in contrast to the Grad equation, our equation leads to the same expressions for the transport coefficients as given by the Chapman–Enskog expansion method and suggests novel formulae of the relaxation times expressed in terms of relaxation functions which allow a natural physical interpretation of the relaxation times. Furthermore, our theory nicely gives the explicit forms of the distribution function and the thirteen hydrodynamic variables in terms of the linearized collision operator, which in turn clearly suggest the proper ansatz forms of them to be adopted in the method of moments.