First batch is in the fermentor, questions for future batches..

Hey,
I just finished my first attempt at brewing, an altitude amber ale kit from homebrewers.com,which is fermenting nicely, and am planning my next brew. I have been looking at some different recipes, and I would like to do a sunset wheat clone, but the girlfriend wants to try a hard lemonade recipe first. So the plan is, in about a week, to transfer the ale to a secondary, sanitize, and then put in the lemonade. I found this recipe, and had a few questions. I'm shooting for a little sourer (tarter?) than mike's hard lemonade, with more kick.

I made up my first malt beverage of the season - hard lemonade.

It's a really easy recipe:
1lb sugar
3.3lbs light malt extract (dry) OR 4.125lbs of light liquid extract
6 cans of frozen minute maid lemonade mix (or any other high quality lemonade mix)

Boil the sugar and malt for about 30 minutes in 2 gallons of water.
Transfer to your fermenter and add the cans of lemonade.
Fill with cold water till you hit 5 gallons of wort.
Pitch yeast - whatever ale yeast you've got will work, you won't really taste the yeast flavor compounds over the lemonade.

That's it. Prime and bottle like normal.

NOTES
Don't use a cheap lemonade concentrate, shell out the extra 50 cents for the good stuff.

Let the lemonade age 3-4 weeks in the bottles, it will come out very sour but age nicely.

Don't think about using this recipe for making pink lemonade - I was way ahead of you and it's undrinkable. I never tried limeade though, feel free to try that yourself.

Click to expand...

Now I'm planning on using corn sugar, and real lemons(juiced). I'm thinking 18 lemons and 6 limes, depending on size, does that sound about right? I ordered a Briess light 3 lb dme, and 11.5 grams saflager s-23 yeast. Also, I was wondering if there is any need to sanitize the lemons/limes, since they are not boiled? I saw that in mead recipes often you pasteurize the honey, and wondered if that was necessary for lemons?, I realize that honey has a higher chance of being infected, but I just want to do it right. Sorry for the huge post, thanks for any suggestions and opinions, I'm going to go grab a beer.