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?

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  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.

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  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.

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

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