Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Limelight in the Spotlight

Yesterday I finally got round to bottling the remaining car-baby of Limelight. I decided to use a bit more priming solution with this one because the couple of bottles I hd already indulged in were a bit under-carbonated and the head disappeared somewhat quickly. With bottling done with, I popped open another bottle of Limelight in order to do my official Cyclops analysis for this beer.



The bottle had been conditioning for 2 weeks and opened with a relief inducing pop, there is something about the sound of opening a bottle of your own beer and knowing that at least you got the carbonating process right! Just a quick recap, the OG of Limelight was 1.040 (that's 10° for all the Plato/Balling buffs), admittedly a little short of the style guides, but there we go. The FG for both car-babies was 1.012, which gave me an ABV of 3.8%

And the Cyclops looks like this:
  • sight - dark orange, cloudy, off-white head
  • smell - citrus fruits, spices, floral notes
  • taste - dry, crisp, citrus
  • sweet - 1/5
  • bitter - 1.5/5
The carbonation from this bottle was ok, as you can see from the head in the picture, although I thought the body was a little on the thin side - given though that my favourite beers are all big on body and flavour, it could be that this is perfectly acceptable and I just like fuller beers.
Given the lovely weather we are enjoying in Prague at the moment, and the fringe benefits that go with that, a few cold Limelights by the river would be a very refreshing prospect.

4 comments:

  1. Nice work. I've gone through a spell of under carbonating lately out of fear of putting too much fizz in. Do you add priming sugar to the bottles or dose the whole batch?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I boil up the sugar in some water and then add it to the carboy before racking it to my bottling jerry can.

    I upped the dosage for the second carboy from 40g per US gallon to 60g, so hopefully those bottles will have more of the classic billowing head.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm sitting with my Hoegaarden bucket full of Limelight now, and loving it. I shouldn't have read your post first, because now that you've mentioned it, it is a leetle bit thin. But for a low-gravity summer quaffer, that's not a problem. The carbonation is spot-on and I've got a nice, lasting layer of froth on the top.

    I'm tasting a sweet biscuity base, and then there's the sharp and tangy citric fruitiness. Topped with the froth, the whole thing is remarkably like drinking lemon meringue pie.

    A genuinely excellent beer, well done, and thanks.

    I just hope the pale ale which I'll shortly be putting into your swingtop is in this league.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you for your comment! Glad to know you enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete

Homebrew - Cheaper than the Pub?

The price of beer has been on my mind a fair bit lately. At the weekend I kicked my first keg of homebrew for the 2024, a 5.1% amber kellerb...