Alcoholic Lemonade

[Rod rocket]

G'day,
does anyone have a good recipe for alcoholic lemonade to keep the misses happy. Would prefer to use real fruit juice if possible. I have tried the brigalow ginger beer and now she realises that my little fermenter can be used for things other than beer! Bad mistake, please help so I can get back to brewing beer.

Thanx Rod rocket.

[blandy]

Brewcraft have a recipe on their website, I haven't tried it, though. Too busy making beer.:

http://www.liquorcraft.com.au/wa.asp?idWebPage=13636&idDetails=105

[Rod rocket]

Thanx Blandy,

I have a pilsener on the go at the moment and I will try the lemonade in a week or so's time. Will let you know how it turns out.

Regards,

Rod rocket

[gregb]

Another thread on this:

http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2418


Cheers,
Greg

[melbourne man]

how long does it take for a lemonade to ferment i have heard it takes like 4-6 weeks?

i would also like a recipe for some strong lemonade maybe 8-9% which is quite sweet like soft drink lemonade.

i was thinking:

4kg glucose
24 lemons chopped up skin and all
30-40g fresh grated ginger
1kg lactose
5g yeast nutrient
safale yeast

filled to 25L

i would just boil up the glucose and chopped lemons, strain it into the fermenter, add the other ingredients and fill to 25L.

my question is would it make any difference if i used sugar instead of glucose?

[mr beer]

melb man
thinking of doing a lemonade myself, just wondering what is "yeast nutrient"
thanks

[NTRabbit]

Yeast nutrient is DAP, Magnesium Sulphate, Folic Acid, Niacin, Calcium Pantothenate and Thiamine Hydro-chloride.

Its really vitamins and nutrients that are essential for the survival of your yeast, as just sugar is not enough. Not needed when brewing a beer, because the malt extracts have enough nutrients on their own, but for anything just using basic sugars its a necessity.

Can pick up a sachet of it from your local HBS

[Chris]

The link to the recipe that gregb posted is good. Well, the lemonade is anyway.

It is quite dry- add more lactose if you want it sweeter. It is like lemon champagne.

[Matt Wilbur]

I have a schizen load of lemons so I think I will make a batch, pretty much to the Liqourcraft recipe, except Ikg of lactose to sweeten a little. I might use 18 lemons including skin as well as the juice of a dozen lemons.

Just to echo Melbourne Man's question: Does anyone know how long it will take to ferment. If it is 4-6 weeks, then I'll forget it, no use wasting beer brewing time.

[rwh]

I'm going to make a raspberry lemonade... Does anyone have an opinion on how many frozen raspberries I'll need? I was thinking 600g. I'm also hoping I can get them from the local supermarket :)

Here's my proposed recipe:

Ingredients:
3kg lemons
600g frozen raspberries
2kg sucrose
1kg lactose
5g yeast nutrient
Ale yeast

Method:
Make yeast starter out of some sucrose, the yeast nutrient and the yeast, using well aerated water @ 25°C.

Wash and juice lemons, grate rind off half skins, the other half of the skins chop up. Add lemons, skins and raspberries to 4L water along with sugar if it fits in the pot. Boil for 20 minutes. Strain into fermenter, make up to 23L, wait till temp < 30°C, pitch yeast starter.

[melbourne man]

looks good don't know about the raspberries

let me know hao it goes i might try it aswell.

[velophile]

I've read that for stronger fruit flavours you're best putting it in at secondary, ie brew beer etc as normal then rack onto fruit in secondary.

[rwh]

Hmm... ok. I'll have to try that next time, because it's already in the fermenter! Used 700g of frozen raspberries because they came in a 350g packet, defrosted them and mashed them through sieve. Not that very much actually goes through the seive...

Do you know that pink lemonade that you can get? I think it's a schwepps original or something. Anyway, this stuff is exactly the same colour! I always thought that the pink lemonade had an artificial pink colour, but I guess they've done well :)

[Chris]

rwh, velophile is right about secondary.

You are best to add fruit to 2ndary, as the boil will drive off a lot of the volatile fruit flavours.

Also, primary fermentation will 'scrub' alot of the flavours out by the action of CO2 bubbles.

Next time, try doing this:

with frozen fruit, put into pot with minimum amount of water that will cover the fruit. Bring the temperature up to ~68*C and keep it there for 20 minutes.

Pour the whole thing into your 2ndary fermenter, and rack your brew on top.

Done.

In relation to the amount of fruit added, as a rule you need 1kg of fruit to every 8-10L. This will give a noticable fruit flavour to your brew.

[Rod rocket]

G'day everyone,
I have just bottled my first batch of lemonade and thought I would tell you how it went.
I used the brewcraft recipie with a couple of changes.
I used 24 large lemons chopped roughly and simmered them skins and all in about 5 litres of water with 2kg of dextrose for around 40 mins untill all the pulp had fallen away from the skins.
When this had cooled sufficiently I strained it and added 250 gms of lactose which seemed sweet enough to me, I then followed their instructions re safale and yeast food.
SG at start was 1040, SG at end was 1005, which should make it around 5%.
It took 1 day to start bubbling which for the next 3 days was 1 bubble every 1 minute! By the 4th day it was bubbling every 5 seconds and remained at that rate for 12 days and then almost stopped over nite.

I used a heat belt from the start and kept the temp at 24deg.
The taste at bottling wasn't unpleasant so I expect it should turnout ok.
I will let you know how it tastes in a few weeks.
Regards Rod rocket.

[ernie]

Are y'all making full 22-23 L brews out of this??

If I want to try this but don't want to chuck out 28 bottles of crap if I don't like it can I just do a test brew of say 10L and use half of everything??

Does this question fall into the "Well duh!" category?

[blandy]

Well duh, of course it does.

No seriously, good question (even if it does have an obvious answer)

[Chris]

You can always run smaller test batches of anything, but you need to be careful, as the brew can sometimes behave differently in smaller (and larger) quantities. I wouldn't worry too much though.

[Rod rocket]

Yeh,
I made 22 litres, can't see why you couldn't do a half batch.

[Chris]

How's your rocket, Rod?