Life

Craft Beer: Wild Beer Co's Sleeping Limes a clean, crisp drop of citrusy, eh, lager?

Sleeping Limes from Somerset brewers Wild Beer Co
Sleeping Limes from Somerset brewers Wild Beer Co Sleeping Limes from Somerset brewers Wild Beer Co

WHEN life give you lemons, you make lemonade. Well metaphorically speaking anyway, because I have yet to meet anyone who, when in possession of a bag of lemons, decided to squeeze all the juice out, add a kilo of sugar and then sell it on the ‘sidewalk’ for '50c a pop'.

Lemonade, the fizzy kind that we know best on this side of the pond, is sometimes used to top up a pint of lager and that’s not a million miles off what drinkers of a certain vintage would refer to as a shandy.

Of course, lemon is a common bedfellow of lime, especially when it comes to certain soft drinks, but the lime’s association with beer has never really progressed the insertion of wedge into the neck of a bottle of a now unfortunately named Mexican beer.

Citrus flavours are nothing new to beer, whether those are derived from hops or the actual addition of the fruits themselves, but lime is one of those that usually takes a back seat.

Not so in Sleeping Limes from Wild Beer Co which is, admittedly a follow-on from Sleeping Lemons from the same guys.

This is a lager, or is it? More about that later, but if you start off with that assumption, then it’s a clean and crisp drop from a nicely chilled 330ml can.

Wild Beer Co are very good at clearly spelling out the dominant ingredients in their beers, which more often than not go beyond the standard water, hops, malt and yeast.

So, a glance at this can tells you that contained within is a blend of limes, sea salt and, eh, lager (although they are very non-committal about that last one, using a question marks either side, Spanish style).

Anyway, the lime gives it a nice refreshing tang, while injecting a little bit of citrus fruit flavour. That’s not surprising given that they’ve hurled the whole lime into the brew – pulp, zest and all, so there is a stong presence of it. I say strong, but the overall feel of this beer is that it is light and the flavours are subtle.

The sea salt is what makes the classification of this crystal-clear beer a little murky. It transforms a refreshing lager into a lip-smacking gose, and it’s all the better for it.

It’s a quite a sessionable number at 4.5 and very much a summer beer, which would go well with anything that has a heavy presence of chillis.