Rags to Richs' Hard Lemonade

[wctisue]

This stuff just sounded too good and too easy not to try so I made a 1-gallon batch based and Appleman's initial post. Almost done fermenting and it tastes OK. I'll let it finish and then sweeten a little.


Somebody give me a little help on the sweetening. Would a can of warmed lemonade concentrate boosted with a little sugar be the way to go?


Wayne

 

[grapeman]

Sorry Wayne, I missed this before, been a bit busy.


Did you add the malt extract? That helps the body a bit. After you add some sorbate, then sweeten it if you want with either sugar water or some lemonade concentrate. Yes if you warmed it, you could probably get the sugar to dissove better. I find it pretty high in acid the way I made it and you don't want to drink too much at one time.


Hope it gets sweetened to your liking.

 

[fish1onthefly]

So I have a few more questions...
I started a batch useing *fresh* lemons that a friend gave me off his tree. A grocery bag full netted me 9 cups of juice. I did not use malt butstarting SG on3 gallonswas 1.08.
Any suggestions on smoothing out the finish?
How low SGdo you let the fermenting go?

 

[grapeman]

Part of the reason for using the malt is to smooth out the finish and give it a bit of body. What yeast did you use? Your starting SG was a bit high, so if it was a weak yeast it should finish before dry and that will leave a bit of sugar in it to help also.

 

[gaudet]

Round two is fermenting.... I got a bunch of free lemons from my neighbor and SWMBO juiced them and we got 3.25 quarts of pure juice. I added a 5 pound bag of sugar to 1/2 gallon of boiling water to dissolve it. I added a little lemon juice for good measure ( I read somewhere that this helps invert the sugars, I don't know how true that source is). Anyways I left out the malt this time to see how different it is. Its percolating happily away in the primary. I will rack and keg it next week. Stay tuned......

 

[peaches9324]

appleman hey I'm gonna try your hard lemonaid recipe next week. I got my pear wine bottled and I will be stabilizing and clearing my beaujolais probly tomorrow if the specific gravity is right. So I'm ready to start on a new project. My question; is there any changes you would make to the recipe? or is it as wonderful already as it sounds? Yes I'm addicted to this hobby! And making the pear wine all from scratch made the making of the kit SO easy! I want to get this made asap so Ihave time to work on getting my small vinyard in and well taken a lemonade break

thanks alot

 

[grapeman]

I think it turned out good like it is. It is remember though fairly high in acid, so you don't want to drink too much of it at once. I doesn't take a long time to make like a true wine, so it can be enjoyed much sooner. Remember it will likely be carbonated and that is why I bottled in beer bottles.

 

[peaches9324]

is there any way to neutralize some of the acidity?

thanks

 

[Tom]

Ck the TA and if high you can add Calcium Carbonat. I'm not sure appleman is talking about the ta though.

 

[grapeman]

Lemons have a lot of acid in them and is a key component of the taste. I would be reluctant to lower it. Just don't try to drink 3 bottles of it at once without getting an acid stomach. Single bottles go down great and I had one guy go through 8 of them in two hours! He said his stomach was fine- but then he has acid reflux so he takes acid medecine anyways