My version of hard lemonade recipe? not quite right

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.

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Pjilek said:

hey,
I just finished bottling my first batch of amber ale, tried it, odd after taste, but I'm hoping after carbonation it'll be fine. Anyway, after bottling the amber ale I transferred my hard lemonade to the carboy, and I snagged a cup during transfer. It doesn't taste bad, but it taste more like beer than lemonade. I was shooting for a harder mike's hard lemonade, and got more of a half beer/half lemonade drink. I used this recipe with a little modification



I wanted to use real lemons/limes, so I substituted the concentrate for 18 freshly squeezed lemons and 10 freshly squeezed limes. Also I used dextrose, I don't know if that would make much of a difference. The lemon flavor is right, but the beer flavor is really noticable. I used briess dry LME. Wondering if you think the beer flavor will mellow out, or if I should do anything. It's been fermenting for a little over two weeks in the upper sixties. Thanks for any opinions/thoughts, sorry for the long post.

Paul

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Pjilek said:

hey,
I just finished bottling my first batch of amber ale, tried it, odd after taste, but I'm hoping after carbonation it'll be fine. Anyway, after bottling the amber ale I transferred my hard lemonade to the carboy, and I snagged a cup during transfer. It doesn't taste bad, but it taste more like beer than lemonade. I was shooting for a harder mike's hard lemonade, and got more of a half beer/half lemonade drink. I used this recipe with a little modification



I wanted to use real lemons/limes, so I substituted the concentrate for 18 freshly squeezed lemons and 10 freshly squeezed limes. Also I used dextrose, I don't know if that would make much of a difference. The lemon flavor is right, but the beer flavor is really noticable. I used briess dry LME. Wondering if you think the beer flavor will mellow out, or if I should do anything. It's been fermenting for a little over two weeks in the upper sixties. Thanks for any opinions/thoughts, sorry for the long post.

Paul

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goodbyebluesky82 said:

Couldn't you use some apple juice and dextrose to boost the ABV while letting the lemons essentially dominate the flavor? Maybe use rice or corn for some of your fermentables instead of malt?

I've always noticed Juicy Juice brand juice always has apple and/or pear juice in ALL of its juices. Even the "grape" juice, and "berry" juice have them listed in their ingredients. I figure apple and pear juice have subtle enough flavors that any stronger fruit essense will override them.

I've never had a commercial hard lemonade though so I don't have much to go on.

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