Kegging/bottling a shandy

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AznDrgn

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I am in the process of making a shandy, wheat beer base with lemonade added. The beer is still in secondary and the lemonade hasn't be made yet. Once I mix the two will it need to be refrigerated to keep the lemonade from spoiling? Since the lemonade has sugar in it I am assuming I will need to use kmeta or something to kill off the yeast before mixing and kegging? How will I deal with bottling?

The recipe I used is below
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/zachs-shandy


Thanks in advance for the help.
 
I asked this in the beginners forum but I haven't received any replies so I am cross posting here.

I am in the process of making a shandy, wheat beer base with lemonade added. The beer is still in secondary and the lemonade hasn't be made yet. Once I mix the two will it need to be refrigerated to keep the lemonade from spoiling? Since the lemonade has sugar in it I am assuming I will need to use kmeta or something to kill off the yeast before mixing and kegging? How will I deal with bottling?

The recipe I used is below
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/zachs-shandy

I am making this for my wedding next week so I need to get this into the keg and bottles this weekend.

Thanks in advance for all the help.
 
I asked this in the beginners forum but I haven't received any replies so I am cross posting here.

I am in the process of making a shandy, wheat beer base with lemonade added. The beer is still in secondary and the lemonade hasn't be made yet. Once I mix the two will it need to be refrigerated to keep the lemonade from spoiling? Since the lemonade has sugar in it I am assuming I will need to use kmeta or something to kill off the yeast before mixing and kegging? How will I deal with bottling?

The recipe I used is below
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/zachs-shandy

I am making this for my wedding next week so I need to get this into the keg and bottles this weekend.

Thanks in advance for all the help.
 
You can't really bottle it (assuming you want to keep the lemonade half sweet) without stove-top pasteurizing. For kegging, you could kill the yeast, but it's not necessary, since they will go dormant at serving temps.
 
I guess another option was if you could find unsweetened lemonade (maybe Kool-aid packets, I dunno) and backsweeten it with something sweet, but unfermentable, such as Splenda. Most people don't like the taste of the fake sugars though.
 
My brew partner and I have made quite a few batches of lemonade wheat. Our best tasting beer has been filtering out the yeast with 5 micron and then 1 micron filters, kegging that up and then adding the lemonade to the keg before chilling / carbonating.

I have also skipped the filtering process and just made sure that the keg stayed at serving temps in order to keep the yeasts from waking up and eating the lemonade concentrate.

So you've got 10 days or so to carbonate this stuff and then bottle it. That's gonna be tight.

If I were you, I'd skip the bottling process and serve from keg. "Rolling trash can kegerator" would be a good way to do this, if your wedding reception area isn't able to serve your beer from corny keg. Or maybe rent a jockey box from somewhere.
 
Thanks for the quick responses!

Unfortunately I won't be able to refrigerate these kegs until Thursday but I have been force carbonating them at room temp so they should be ready to go as far as that. I don't like fake sweeteners and I don't have access to micron filters so it looks like I will need to kill off the yeast. I use Kmeta for wine, I assume that will work the same for beer? I'm still left with the question of weather the lemonade itself will need to be refrigerated once it is mixed with the beer?

LandoLincoln, The most important part is the kegging, the bottles were just going to be "thank you" gifts for people working the wedding.
 
The lemonade won't need to be refrigerated after adding it to the beer. Yes, you can use kmeta & sorbate to kill the yeast (just like with wine) assuming you are bottling off the keg.
 
You've already started to carbonate them, and you're going to add in the lemonade concentrate later? Ooph. I have not had good experiences with this method. Just sayin'.
 
Sorry for the confusion, let me back up a little. I am doing 5 beers for my wedding and I did them in 6 gallon batches so I keg 5 gallons and I bottle whatever is left ~1 gallon. All ingredients are mixed together in the bottling bucket prior to bottling/ kegging. Kegs are being force carbonated and the bottles are just getting priming sugar. I have already finished 3 of the beers and they have been force carbonated in the kegs and are just sitting in my basement. I check them all at least every few days to make sure they are still under pressure and they have ~30 PSI to them at room temperature.

LandoLincoln, what kind of ratio do you use when mixing lemonade to beer? The recipe I used said 3 gallons of beer to 2 gallons of lemonade but it does mention it was a bit sweet. Do you use any particular kind of lemonade? I was originally going to make the Chik fil a lemonade but I am starting to get on a time crunch and might decide to go a different route.
 
AznDrgn said:
Sorry for the confusion, let me back up a little. I am doing 5 beers for my wedding and I did them in 6 gallon batches so I keg 5 gallons and I bottle whatever is left ~1 gallon. All ingredients are mixed together in the bottling bucket prior to bottling/ kegging. Kegs are being force carbonated and the bottles are just getting priming sugar. I have already finished 3 of the beers and they have been force carbonated in the kegs and are just sitting in my basement. I check them all at least every few days to make sure they are still under pressure and they have ~30 PSI to them at room temperature.

LandoLincoln, what kind of ratio do you use when mixing lemonade to beer? The recipe I used said 3 gallons of beer to 2 gallons of lemonade but it does mention it was a bit sweet. Do you use any particular kind of lemonade? I was originally going to make the Chik fil a lemonade but I am starting to get on a time crunch and might decide to go a different route.
Click to expand...

I've found that three parts beer to one part lemonade works best. And just skip the water for the lemonade concentrate. So for a 5 gallon batch of beer, you'd need enough concentrate that would normally make 1.6 gallons of lemonade. If you buy cans of lemonade concentrate that makes 64 ounces of lemonade, then you'd need to add about 3.2 cans of concentrate to your keg.

I've tried Minute Maid, but I've had better experiences with the Jewel-Osco store brand concentrate. Chik Fil A lemonade isn't concentrated, so you'd end up with some pretty watery lemon shandy.
 
Have you seen anything special in the ingredients of the Jewel-Osco brand vs Minute Maid? I don't have Jewel-Osco here in Va so I will need to source a substitute.
 
AznDrgn said:
Thanks for the quick responses!

Unfortunately I won't be able to refrigerate these kegs until Thursday but I have been force carbonating them at room temp so they should be ready to go as far as that. I don't like fake sweeteners and I don't have access to micron filters so it looks like I will need to kill off the yeast. I use Kmeta for wine, I assume that will work the same for beer? I'm still left with the question of weather the lemonade itself will need to be refrigerated once it is mixed with the beer?

LandoLincoln, The most important part is the kegging, the bottles were just going to be "thank you" gifts for people working the wedding.
Click to expand...

Remember that k-meta doesn't kill wine yeast or ale yeast- that's why winemakers use sulfites as those yeast are tolerant of sulfites.

Sorbate doesn't kill yeast, either, but it inhibits yeast reproduction so once fermentation has stopped, and the beer (or wine) is clear, it can be racked off of the yeast and sorbate added. Then, fermentation won't restart (hopefully). It doesn't work very well with beer, because there is still of ton of yeast in suspension almost always except in something like a lager (or in the case of filtering).
 
AznDrgn said:
Have you seen anything special in the ingredients of the Jewel-Osco brand vs Minute Maid? I don't have Jewel-Osco here in Va so I will need to source a substitute.
Click to expand...

No, not really. I'd go to the local grocery store and find the non-name-brand lemonade concentrate and use that.
 
I know you prefer lemonade vs. lemonade flavor, but for what it's worth I had good success recently with these ratios of beer to Kool Aid lemonade mix added at priming sugar flameout.

1 gal = 1.375 teaspoons
2 gal = 2.75
3 gal = 4.125
4 gal = 5.5
5 gal = 6.875

In truth, I only did a 2-gal batch and used that to figure the other volumes. I actually added more like 2.5 teaspoons b/c I wound up with less than 2-gal after leaving some on the trub. But it was right where I like it - more beer than lemonade.

Anyway, good luck. And congrats!
 
With the wedding next week,it's too late for bottling. You need 3-4 weeks for that. And unsweetened lemonade with kegging would be better. you want it carbonated.
 
Thanks for all the great advice everyone. Looks like I will be kegging and mixing with lemonade concentrate. still not 100% sure what to do about the yeast issue but I am leaning towards refrigerating the keg until the wedding to keep the yeast at bay. My future wife will just have to deal with having a keg in the fridge for a few days.
 

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