Another Bloody Lemonade Thread

[chemacky]

Hey guys,

...yes, it's another lemonade thread, but this ones a little bit different. I've done a lot of reading, and a lot of threads have people saying something along the lines of "this is my recipe, i'll report back in a month on how it is" and they never do.

So my plan is, to share my recipe, and actually report back with some tasting notes! Fermentation is either finished now, or very close to.

However, I also have a question! I tasted some last night, and while it's not too bad, it's not as lemon-y as I had hoped for. What would you guys think of racking onto some lemons or lemon juice? I figured, it seems to be a good way to draw out raspberry colour and flavour, I can't see how lemons would be too different... The only thing I can think of that might throw up any problems with racking onto whole or chopped lemon is the horrible evil white pith everyone talks about. But I can't see this being too hard to avoid. Would a couple of weeks in secondary on lemons add the extra lemony flavour I'm after? I couldn't find anything on this in my searching.

Well, anyway, here's my recipe:

Lemon-Limeade

3kg Lemons - juiced
10 Limes - juiced
10 Lemons zested
3 Limes - zested
680g (Ironbark) honey
1kg Brown Sugar
750g Lactose <- was only supposed to be 500, but I was working with a friend thinking of getting into brewing, and he dumped most of a 1kg bag in, topped it up a few grams to make it a nice round number.
3tsp Pectinase

 

[Chaddy00]

Please do post how it turned out, Ive been wanting to try a lemonade for a long time but It seems very tricky and time consuming to gamble on getting it right

 

[brettprevans]

what was the final volume?

also depending on the actual lemons, the flavour will change. ie soe are more acidic, some are sweeter, some dont have a lot of flavour in their juice depending on ripeness etc. So I'd add more lemon juice and/or lemon pulp. add some more zest also. zest is good.

the ironbark honey is also a pretty potent flavoured honey will will also be challanging the acidity of the lemon.

 

[chemacky]

Final volume was 23 litres. OG was 1.042, but this sounds a little suspect to me... I felt like it should have been higher. Perhaps it wasn't mixed well? Or temp was a bit high when I read it?


When you say add more lemon juice/pulp and zest, do you mean into secondary? Will this just ferment out (excluding the zest) and not contribute much more flavour? Would finings be worth anything to me in this situation?

thanks.

 

[JestersDarts]

+1 to posting results.

I gave up on the idea of brewing an alcoholic lemonade becuase I didn't have the fermenting space , but made a simple non alcoholic version straight into a keg, gassed up, and was really refreshing, Kinda like solo, took me 1 and half hours tops, and I had instant lemonade fizzy that I could use as a mixer if you wanted it alcoholic. Went down a treat, Is good if your brewing gear is all tied up making beer i guess.

2 and 1/2 Litres lemon juice (which was about 1 esky full of lemons, 3 of these were grapefruit because I was getting juicing fatigue)
2 kg white sugar (chuck in keg first and disolve in a bit of boiling water)
topped to 17 L water
2 Cups of homemade lemon cordial that I decided to throw in at the last minute.
(above quantites are off the top of my head I dont have my notes with me at the moment)

all into keg and give a good shake.

I was worried about the shelf life of this, but it was all drank over about a month and kept at around 3 Degrees celcius in keg - and it tasted great the whole way through.

JD

 

[jonocarroll]

+1 to posting results.

I gave up on the idea of brewing an alcoholic lemonade becuase I didn't have the fermenting space , but made a simple non alcoholic version straight into a keg, gassed up, and was really refreshing, Kinda like solo, took me 1 and half hours tops, and I had instant lemonade fizzy that I could use as a mixer if you wanted it alcoholic. Went down a treat, Is good if your brewing gear is all tied up making beer i guess.

2 and 1/2 Litres lemon juice (which was about 1 esky full of lemons, 3 of these were grapefruit because I was getting juicing fatigue)
2 kg white sugar (chuck in keg first and disolve in a bit of boiling water)
topped to 17 L water
2 Cups of homemade lemon cordial that I decided to throw in at the last minute.
(above quantites are off the top of my head I dont have my notes with me at the moment)

all into keg and give a good shake.

I was worried about the shelf life of this, but it was all drank over about a month and kept at around 3 Degrees celcius in keg - and it tasted great the whole way through.

JD

SNAP.

'All Natural' for me though... no cordial.

 

[brettprevans]

Final volume was 23 litres. OG was 1.042, but this sounds a little suspect to me... I felt like it should have been higher. Perhaps it wasn't mixed well? Or temp was a bit high when I read it?


When you say add more lemon juice/pulp and zest, do you mean into secondary? Will this just ferment out (excluding the zest) and not contribute much more flavour? Would finings be worth anything to me in this situation?

thanks.

yeah i menaing into secondary. but i was kind of thinking you were kegging. if your bottling you wont want to do this as there is sugar in the lemon juice that will ferment. What your probably better off doing is making a small boil with some juice and zest to extract as much flavour from the zest then add it to the mix.

you can add a chemical to kill the yeast and halt fermentation but i dont like the idea of that. so if your bottling you;ll just have to let it ferment out.

finings clear out proteins etc form the beer. it just makes it clearer. its of no use to you. well actually i suppose you could use it, then rack then add and hope youve left most of the yeast behind, but i personally wouldnt bother.

 

[JestersDarts]

SNAP.

'All Natural' for me though... no cordial.

Haha within 2 minutes of each other!
Sounds like we pretty much did the same thing..
The cordial was homemade also, but not by me, by my dad - not sure how he made it, although its probably just a reductoin of lemon and sugar. I threw it in, becasue at taste test, it was still a bit tangy i think. In any case, it was a last second thing.

Top stuff!


JD

 

[SuiCIDER]

I just finished up a lemonade. I have to warn you, using lemon in the primary will greatly reduce any flavour you are planning to get from it.

I did a 23L batch, and ended up juicing around 30 lemons and zesting 2 of them.

Recipe: (I was only really toying with the idea, testing out a new fermenter, pleasing SWMBO)
20 lemons
2 zested
4kg white sugar
Standard wine yeast
Topped to 23L with water
+ Staggered nutrient additions

(didn't take any hydro readings, was just an experiment!)

When I tasted it out of the primary prior to fermentation, it was almost TOO lemon-ey, thought I had made a terrible mistake, but hoped for the best + a few years might make it drinkable. After fermentation was complete there was NO lemon taste AT ALL. It tasted like sugar + water + alcohol. Not the greatest. I decided to forego any secondary and just add pasteurised lemon juice + water (added the juice of 10lemons to 500ml boiling water) and added directly to the bottles.

Turned out DELICIOUS, probably won't last till summer.

 

[chemacky]

Did you use the lemon juice to prime the bottles?! Or was this as well as priming sugar?

 

[SuiCIDER]

Did you use the lemon juice to prime the bottles?! Or was this as well as priming sugar?

Boiled water + lemon juice just to get some more lemon flavour. I stopped fermentation early by pasteurising my bottles which meant I didn't need to add any sugar, it was sweet enough for my liking! (Refer to my pasteurisation thread).

 

[chemacky]

Ok, after finally getting around to bottling, as I had been busy here's how it went.


After a bit over a month and a bit in the fermenter at 18 degrees, there was very little lemon taste to it, and it tasted a lot like 'fermentation' and not very sweet (thanks a lot lactose). I decided to go with suiCIDER's advice, and I boiled up about another 3kg of lemons which were juiced... and about 15 of them zested. I also added 500g of dextrose. I added around 40ml of this solution and carb drops as normal to each bottle at bottling. After testing one every few days for carbination, it has finally carbed up nicely, and I am in the process of using suiCIDER's bottle pasteurisation technique as I type this.

Tasting:
As I was waiting for the batch to carb, with each one I tested, I tasted also obviously. It is quite lemony, almost too much so. However these testings were all at room temperature. I decided to actually put one in the fridge before I tested it, and It was really quite delicious! Not too lemony at all and perfectly sweet! I am absolutely thrilled with how this went. No detectable hint of the honey (at least for me), but I'm not sure if this is good or bad. The only thing maybe holding me back from doing this again is the amount of effort... and the cost. However I highly recommend you try a lemonade at least once.

I assume after pasteurisation bottle conditioning becomes impossible, but I will report back towards the end of the batch and let you know how my mates liked it. I assume it'll be a big hit with the girls.

 

[Chookers]

has anyone used this Lemonade recipe?? http://www.liquorcraft.com.au/wa.asp?idWeb...p;idDetails=105
and if so how did it turn out. I have used this recipe as a guide and changed a few ingredients.. I fermented it for 48 hrs now going to bottle, havent tasted it yet.. it smells very lemony but looks awful. hopefully the yeast will drop out when I put them in the fridge.

 

[bum]

I fermented it for 48 hrs now going to bottle

You got house and contents insurance?

 

[Silo Ted]

You got house and contents insurance?

Or be be more clear on this, seriously consider not bottling. You may have misread the following in that recipe, which states:

Allow the lemonade to ferment until it stops then allow it to settle & clear for 48 hours.

 

[Chookers]

Or be be more clear on this, seriously consider not bottling. You may have misread the following in that recipe, which states:

Allow the lemonade to ferment until it stops then allow it to settle & clear for 48 hours.

Oh..

right... yeh I thought that sounded a bit off bottling after 48hrs, but I thought it was something to do with sweetness or carbonation..


BOOM!! no I havent bottled yet.. it looks really awful. Since Im likely to blow my head off if I do bottle now, I'll wait until it stops bubbling and think I'll mix some honey in (how does honey go for priming?) then bottle.

Has anyone tried that recipe??

if so how was it??

 

[manticle]

Don't wait till it stops bubbling. Look up bottle bombs, final gravity, how do I know my beer is ready, hydrometer usage, steady gravity etc etc etc.

Wait until it's finished fermenting which is not necessarily indicated by finishing bubbling.

If you want a sweeter lemonade there are methods to help but get the basic process down pat first before you try them.

 

[Silo Ted]

If you want a sweeter lemonade there are methods to help but get the basic process down pat first before you try them.

Was it your posts that I have read about adding lactose,as a non fermentable sugar source that adds sweetness ? Im thinking about jacking up some bottles out of a batch (beer) in a few weeks for a comparison.

 

[manticle]

Lactose is unfermentable by most yeasts. I add it to some ciders and my sweet stouts. Boil it up first and add it at the beginning of fermentation.

You can apparently backsweeten with it but I like to give ingredients time to integrate themselves.

 

[Chookers]

I was trying to do this without lactose, as some of the people who would be drinking this lemonade are intolerant.. so I was going to rely on residual sugars and cut the fermenting process probably with the pasteurisation method.

I wanted to know what sort of alc content would be present at (say 48hrs?) and also carbonation issues.. I want this lemonade to have at least the same strength as a beer. I want to be able to taste lemon.. is it possible to make an alcoholic Solo-ish drink??