Lemonade Attenpt 2

[furby83]

I'm making my second attempt at a lemonade. my last attempt was EPIC fail due to me mucking with it after fermentation was finished.

so for this batch i will be using a VERY basic recipe:

• Lemon juice & zest
• Water (solid & liquid)
• sugar of some sort.

it will be a 15L batch so here are the questions:

1. How much lemon juice would i need?

a. how many lemons would that be?​

2. I'm aiming for a mid-strength 3.5-4% how much sugar would i need?

a. what type of sugar would be best?​

3. at the moment it's fairly hot (29-30) would submersing my fermenter in a tub of water/ice effect it adversely?

 

[Tanga]

Should be - you will get some winey flavours, but that may happen anyway (let me know).

I'm not sure how much juice, but a little should go a long way. I made my ghetto alcohol water again recently, and I only used 10mL of juice in 2L it and can still taste it. As far as sugar is concerned 100g dex / litre gives 6% alcohol (not counting any fermentables in lemon juice). Lemon juice seems to have little fermenables, as would the skin (easily less than 5g / 100 mL). Remember that 5% is added for carbonation in the bottles, so 50g / litre...

Oops, according to the brew calculator that's only 3.2 %
http://www.brewcraft.com.au/wa.asp?idWebPa...p;idDetails=172

Between 800-900 grams of dex in 15 L. I'd recommend dex because it gives a cleaner taste.



EDIT: Do you want it sweet? Are you using artificial sweetener or lactose?

You could always just make up a weaker version of my ghetto alcowater (900 g of dex / 15L), bottle, and mix with lemon cordial or the lemonade mix from soda stream.

/pimp =D.

 

[furby83]

Remember that 5% is added for carbonation in the bottles

i use carb drops & on the pack it says ~.5%.

in my last batch (before i FUBAR'd it) i used the zest of 5 lemons and the juice of 15 (about 1L) and 4kg of sugar.
it was fairly sweet and had a good taste BUT i didn't think i was strong enough. i added more lemon juice, pulp, zest & sugar and let it sit for a week, unfortunately fermentation had finished before i added the extra stuff and it rotted/decomposed/didn't ferment. it smelled RANK and tasted worse :icon_vomit: .

 

[XavierZ]

I made a batch recently. Tasted quite nice actually.

Below is extracted from my Blog page. After that is further notes.

Lemonade for Men!
My first experiment into a hard lemonade just got started. After two successful Ginger Beers and a
Hefeweizen on the way, I really wanted to try out a hard lemonade. Now this isn't going to be your
softdrink kind of lemonade, super sweet and full of sugar. It's going to be tangy like a REAL lemonade
used to be, but with a little percentage of ABV, so this is how it went:

Ingredients:
2.6kg sliced fresh lemons
600g Dextrose
400g Maltodextrin
2tsp Yeast Nutrient
10g Safale S-04
Filled to 15 litres.

The lemons were washed, sliced and then frozen to burst the fruit cells. The S-04 yeast starter was
prepared and 2 litres of water was brought to the boil and the Dex/Malto was boiled for a further 15min.
The hot mixture was then poured over the frozen lemons inside the fermenter.

The water level was raised to 15 litres with the inclusion of the two teaspoons of yeast nutrient. Once
thoroughly mixed, the OG was taken at 1028. I really didn't care to make much in the way of calculations
as to what to expect, as I'm doing this for fun and see how it turns out after winging it. After some nice
aeration, the yeast was pitched with the mixture around 18 degC, aerated once again.

Ditched the fermenter lid in favour for clingwrap once again and popped into the Crushinator (that's the
new name of 430 litre freezer now hehe) at a temp of 21 degC. I plan to add more fresh lemons and/or
lactose if required after fermentation to suit the taste buds. Oh and carbonate in the bottle too.

Fingers crossed I come out with an awesome refreshing lemonade that will be ready for summer!

Cheers!



Further notes and Lessons learnt

Use Flesh and Zest of all the lemons only. DO NOT USE the white of the lemon.

After fermentation was complete, the ABV was about 2.5%

The lemonade was racked into 5L carboys and settled for a further 2-3 weeks.

For every 1 litre, I added 5 teaspoons of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of Stevia artificial sweetener to taste.
Next batch will have sweetener halved.

Bottled with a boost of 1 teaspoon per bottle of yeast starter from future batch.

Thinking back, I would have added more fermentables, possibly raw or white sugar and stopped the fermentation
earlier to hold onto some sweetness.

Considered a Sweet Mead yeast for easier management of sweetness level.

 

[Tanga]

Oops, yeah - .5 % > damn decimal place.

How did you get it to not 'bottle bomb' (ie explode the bottle) with that much fermentable? Remember, after you bottle it then it will continue to ferment until it reaches the maximum for the yeast you use (beer and bread yeast about 12% - anything else (cider, wine, most mead yeasts) MUCH higher.

Unless you want to use bottle pasteurisation (a tricky beast, and potentially dangerous) then you won't be able to use sugar to sweeten.

 

[furby83]

Oops, yeah - .5 % > damn decimal place.

How did you get it to not 'bottle bomb' (ie explode the bottle) with that much fermentable? Remember, after you bottle it then it will continue to ferment until it reaches the maximum for the yeast you use (beer and bread yeast about 12% - anything else (cider, wine, most mead yeasts) MUCH higher.

Unless you want to use bottle pasteurisation (a tricky beast, and potentially dangerous) then you won't be able to use sugar to sweeten.

i bottled 2 750ml bottles 2 carb drops left it for a week. then put in the fridge for a week. tasted it it tasted like CRAP. carried my fermenter to the storm water drain in front of my house and dumped it. the smell of it was of fruit that has fallen off the tree and rotted on the ground taste wasn't much better. the ABV was about 13%. SG 1090 FG 1000

 

[Tanga]

Ah, yeah - I think that's the pith (like you said). I tried to make lemonade once - if it wasn't for the pith I think it would have been a decent drop, but as is I just junked it.

 

[furby83]

when you sliced the lemons was it skin, pith, flesh and all or just the flesh?


about putting it in the "Crushinator" i don't have a spare fridge. i was going to use one of those 80L storage containers and fill with ice/water to keep the temp down and cover it with towels to keep the light out. anything i would have to worry about with doing that?

 

[XavierZ]

when you sliced the lemons was it skin, pith, flesh and all or just the flesh?

I used a food slicer and cut the entire lemon.
Next time, i'll use use peeler to remove the zest then cut the flesh away from the pith.

 

[SuiCIDER]

I made a lemonade (20L) and used the juice of 24 lemons and zested 4. After fermentation it didn't taste a thing like lemons, just like alcoholic water. I had to add some juice to every bottle (so around another 16 more lemons) after backsweetening to taste. I then pasteurised it and it came out AMAZING. Like actually, amazing. Tasted like a heaps ghetto old-school lemonade from the local kids on the corner selling it.

 

[furby83]

UPDATE


started it tonight:

~3kg lemons (25 +-) all juiced (about 1.5L juice)
zest of 10
2kg white sugar (CSR)
1kg Honey
boiled up with 4L water

brought water to boil
added zest
15 added sugar
30 added juice
50 min added honey
60 in Tub cooling overnight.

smells very lemmony (its a word now)

 

[furby83]

tasted when i took reading.
little strong on the honey, should mellow out.

SG 1100
but the temp was still a little high. im going to take another one tonight.

 

[furby83]

UPDATE

one week on. looks good.
haven't taken a reading yet.

i decided to forgo the ice-bath any just use 2 towels. kept the temp at ~28C.
using cling wrap this time as the lid + air-lock won't fit with the container lid on.

if the taste is wrong this time i will use Cordial at bottling.

 

[XavierZ]

UPDATE
if the taste is wrong this time i will use Cordial at bottling.

I found that all but the pith taste mellowed out after about 2months in the bottle.

 

[furby83]

I found that all but the pith taste mellowed out after about 2months in the bottle.

this time when i made it i only used Zest, Juice, Sugar & honey(last minute addition).

the last time when i was going to bottle it didn't taste very lemmony so i added more juice, pulp, zest & sugar. instead of adding to the flavor it rotted instead of secondary fermenting.

i haven't taken a second reading yet but it looks good, maybe tonight or tomorrow. will be 1 week then.

here's hoping that this one works.

 

[furby83]

UPDATE

bottled about a week and a half ago.
haven't exploded yet :super: taking that as a good sign.