Hard Lemonade

Here is the recipe I ended up doing this morning:
4 lb Sugar
1 lb light DME
1 lb lactose
15 lemons - chosen arbitrarily (recipe: 12-24) but I juiced the lemons. Added that to the pot and chopped up 2 and put them in the pot.
Montrachet Yeast - 1 packet
5 gm of yeast nutrient

Procedure:
Juiced lemons. Diced two lemons after juiced (thought maybe the peel would add some bitterness to it)
Heated 1 gallon of water to a simmer.
Added fermentables (sugar,DME, juice) diced peels & lactose to pot and simmered x 20 minutes. Added yeast nutrient.
Cooled.
Added 3 gallons of cool water to fermenter, then added cool wort/???must???
Topped off with 1 gallon of cool water.
Checked gravity: 1.050
Added yeast. (Didn't use a starter - probably should have, but thought I might be willing to take a risk. If it isn't fermenting by tomorrow night I'll make a starter and add small portions of must slowly over a couple days then dump into fermenter.)

Later guys,
JDFROMJAX

lemon and other citrus fruit peels are composed of 2 parts, the rind, and the zest. the rind is bitter, and the zest holds strong flavor and sent of the fruit in the essential oils. you can use a carrot peeler, or a fine cheese grater, or ideally a zester to get the zest off of the whole citrus fruit. this zest can be used for flavoring without the bitterness of the peel. if you have a small distiller setup and know how to do it you can easily also make pure essential oils from the zest, though im not sure how you would combine the oil due to the fact it will not mix with water.

just thought that might help you out. please report back on how the hard lemonade goes, I havnt seen too many good recipes out there and im looking for a really good one.

best of luck

jacobdaughtry said:

Here is the recipe I ended up doing this morning:
4 lb Sugar
1 lb light DME
1 lb lactose
15 lemons - chosen arbitrarily (recipe: 12-24) but I juiced the lemons. Added that to the pot and chopped up 2 and put them in the pot.
Montrachet Yeast - 1 packet
5 gm of yeast nutrient

Procedure:
Juiced lemons. Diced two lemons after juiced (thought maybe the peel would add some bitterness to it)
Heated 1 gallon of water to a simmer.
Added fermentables (sugar,DME, juice) diced peels & lactose to pot and simmered x 20 minutes. Added yeast nutrient.
Cooled.
Added 3 gallons of cool water to fermenter, then added cool wort/???must???
Topped off with 1 gallon of cool water.
Checked gravity: 1.050
Added yeast. (Didn't use a starter - probably should have, but thought I might be willing to take a risk. If it isn't fermenting by tomorrow night I'll make a starter and add small portions of must slowly over a couple days then dump into fermenter.)

Later guys,
JDFROMJAX

Click to expand...

Hi I just started a

jacobdaughtry said:

Here is the recipe I ended up doing this morning:
4 lb Sugar
1 lb light DME
1 lb lactose
15 lemons - chosen arbitrarily (recipe: 12-24) but I juiced the lemons. Added that to the pot and chopped up 2 and put them in the pot.
Montrachet Yeast - 1 packet
5 gm of yeast nutrient

Procedure:
Juiced lemons. Diced two lemons after juiced (thought maybe the peel would add some bitterness to it)
Heated 1 gallon of water to a simmer.
Added fermentables (sugar,DME, juice) diced peels & lactose to pot and simmered x 20 minutes. Added yeast nutrient.
Cooled.
Added 3 gallons of cool water to fermenter, then added cool wort/???must???
Topped off with 1 gallon of cool water.
Checked gravity: 1.050
Added yeast. (Didn't use a starter - probably should have, but thought I might be willing to take a risk. If it isn't fermenting by tomorrow night I'll make a starter and add small portions of must slowly over a couple days then dump into fermenter.)

Later guys,
JDFROMJAX

Click to expand...

Hi I just started a hard lemonade 48hours ago. I still have no signs of fermentation. I used 1900mls of real lemon concentrate for a 5 gal carboy. Is this still not diluted enough? I have a small amount of sediment on the bottom of my carboy. Any suggestions will be great thanks

What temp are you fermenting?
And have patience, when I did a lemon wine it took several days before activity started.

I'm not certain, but I think "Real Lemon" has preservatives, sulphitrs or similar which may inhibit fermentation. I've only used fresh lemons so cannot be sure.

Wow! resurrecting a post from the long dead (10 years! ) ... Is the OP still active?
Real Lemon DOES have sorbates and sorbates inhibit fermentation but you dilute the concentrate and so dilute the preservatives. That said, "skeeter pee" (SP) , a wine that is made from lemon concentrates makes use of a previous wine's yeast sediment and that suggests that the wine maker using lemon concentrate is using the equivalent of a yeast starter (although that yeast may have been stressed - somewhat - as it fermented a wine at 12-14% ABV )... That said, when I made a mead version of SP , I added the lemon juice to the secondary after allowing the yeast to work on the honey for a week or so... Had no problem fermenting Real Lemon.