HARD! Lemonade

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Just threw one down last night, will be kegging this, and bottling any leftover as a comparison.

With the kegged amount can I back sweeten with sugar at kegging stage as long as I get the keg chilled that night? I figured the cold crash will stall the yeast and allow me to finish sweeten with regular sugar?

And as for bottling I assume I just prime with sugar as per beers?
 
Just threw one down last night, will be kegging this, and bottling any leftover as a comparison.

With the kegged amount can I back sweeten with sugar at kegging stage as long as I get the keg chilled that night? I figured the cold crash will stall the yeast and allow me to finish sweeten with regular sugar?

And as for bottling I assume I just prime with sugar as per beers?
you can do that but if it were me i'd be checking the pressure regularly and releasing the PRV if necessary. Maybe even chuck a spunding valve on there. Being cold slows down the yeast - doesn't stop it altogether.
 
you can do that but if it were me i'd be checking the pressure regularly and releasing the PRV if necessary. Maybe even chuck a spunding valve on there. Being cold slows down the yeast - doesn't stop it altogether.
Ok cheers, will see how it comes out once fermenting stops, cheers.
 
I will hopefully be kegging this tonight as long as gravity has reached 1004-1008, my gravity at brewing was 1040, so this has it in the Coopers kit ball park at brewing, and those kits we bottle/keg at the 1004-1008 marks.
 
I will hopefully be kegging this tonight as long as gravity has reached 1004-1008, my gravity at brewing was 1040, so this has it in the Coopers kit ball park at brewing, and those kits we bottle/keg at the 1004-1008 marks.

Let it ride another day - with only simple sugars and fruit juice you should expect roughly 100% attenuation. It will quite possibly get down slightly under 1.000
 
Kegged it on Wednesday @ 1002, initial warm/flat taste test is promising, not overly sweet, slight bitter pith flavour (guessing this is due to lemons having thick skins) and a mild lemon flavour, I may tap it this over the weekend for a sneaky chilled test. Will keep you guys posted.
 
So after being kegged a few weeks, and some taste tests etc...
Things to note, very bitter pith/peel taste present, but as I said before could be due to the thick skins on the lemons used, not overly fizzed running 14psi on the reg shared with my beer. Have found nicest with a dash of lime syrup prior to pouring in glass, and even some angustura bitters to make a nice LLB.

Will try again, thinking of doubling lactose, and depending on peel condition maybe omit some of the peels (after zezting)
Suggestion was made by friend to add some Lemon cordial at kegging to add the sweetness, may even add some to existing keg and see how it goes.
 
So after being kegged a few weeks, and some taste tests etc...
Things to note, very bitter pith/peel taste present, but as I said before could be due to the thick skins on the lemons used, not overly fizzed running 14psi on the reg shared with my beer. Have found nicest with a dash of lime syrup prior to pouring in glass, and even some angustura bitters to make a nice LLB.

Will try again, thinking of doubling lactose, and depending on peel condition maybe omit some of the peels (after zezting)
Suggestion was made by friend to add some Lemon cordial at kegging to add the sweetness, may even add some to existing keg and see how it goes.

Good idea to leave out some of the pith especially with thick skinned lemons.
Doesn't really add to the fruity flavour - just adds extra bitterness.

I've got a lemon lime and ginger mix on the go for Christmas drinking :)
Zested the lemons then cut off the pith - the limes were just sliced.
 
I finally got around to brewing a 22 litre batch.
To be direct I don't think much of the recipe & my brew was based on several changes.
This I see is an old thread but it came up with a Google search so maybe others might benefit from my comments:
1) It's plain daft to call up a given number of lemons (12, 24 ??) because the lemon cultivars vary widely in acidity, size, & taste. The lemon tree in our garden is a Meyer, the fruit is a bit smaller than a tennis ball, thin skinned & with a milder almost sweet lemon flavour. Ordinarily they are easy to juice & yield good quantities of juice. So base your brew on a set quantity of juice from the lowest cost lemons available. In my case, due to a poor season the plentiful fruit yielded less juice than I expected. So fortunately, we had some frozen juice from last year, & so supplemented & we ended up with 3 litres which had been my target. BTW 3 litres was based on another recipe I found.
2) I strongly recommend against chopping up the lemons & using everything (skin, pulp, juice & pith).
Instead use the juice together with the zest from as many lemons as you can manage, zesting is time consuming & tedious. In my case my wife zested 12 lemons selecting those with the best skins.
3) You need to pasteurise the zest & juice to avoid a brew contamination. I brought my wort to 80 C for 15 minutes, that's more than sufficient.
4) If you use 5 litres as the recipe suggests you will have trouble getting your pitch temp down. I strongly suggest that the 3 litres of juice with the zest is just fine & when you make up to 22 litres with chilled water as I did (Gold Coast, Queensland !!) you will be able to reach an acceptable pitch temperature for your yeast.
5) So decisions on which yeast - I don't know sorry - I used US-05 & a sachet of Coopers ale yeast pitched with 2 sachets of yeast nutrient at 25 C. After 3 days no action whatever, & I was about to discard & go lick my wounds; but then on day 4 fermentation became discernable, this continued for a further 7 days. I have never before seen anything like this pattern & I was of the opinion that I would probably end up discarding this brew. When I eventually kegged the brew tasting revealed no infection & a lemon flavour that was quite strong but not too strong. The yeast seemed to have settled on the fermenter bottom but there was a much lower quantity than I am used to seeing when brewing beer.
If I ever do this again I will probably try a wine yeast, maybe in combination with an ale yeast.
6) I chose, with my wife's "advice," to back-sweeten in the keg with 4 litres of Aldi bought cloudy apple juice. The type that has no added sugar, colouring, or preservatives ..... At this point I should say the uncarbonated brew tasted OK, I suspect that after carbonation & served at the appropriate temp this will be a decent drop.
7) In summary, the only fermentable material was 2 Kg of dextrose, (no lactose !!!!).
Hope this long post will be of help, as always comment welcomed.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top