Hard Rasberry lemonade?!

I got a little experimental 2 months ago. I bought 4 cans of raspberry lemonade and added it to a pot of warm water and added 2 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of honey. I added some pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient also. Topped it off to a little over 2.25 gallons of water and aerated the he'll out of it. Pitched one pack of red star Cotes De blanc wine yeast. OG WAS 1.070 and FG was around .9700 which brought me just under 10% abv. I tasted it tonight and its cleared nicely literally. No pink color but def has a strong taste of ras. And lemon but really dry. Kinda searching for suggestions on whether I should pitch some corn sugar and splenda? Should I leave it dry and just are it? Just add splenda? Has anybody ever added food coloring? Thanks all for any help.

That was 2 cups corn sugar btw.

petrostar said:

I got a little experimental 2 months ago. I bought 4 cans of raspberry lemonade and added it to a pot of warm water and added 2 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of honey. I added some pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient also. Topped it off to a little over 2.25 gallons of water and aerated the he'll out of it. Pitched one pack of red star Cotes De blanc wine yeast. OG WAS 1.070 and FG was around .9700 which brought me just under 10% abv. I tasted it tonight and its cleared nicely literally. No pink color but def has a strong taste of ras. And lemon but really dry. Kinda searching for suggestions on whether I should pitch some corn sugar and splenda? Should I leave it dry and just are it? Just add splenda? Has anybody ever added food coloring? Thanks all for any help.

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Sounds good to me just like it is!

I did the same thing about 3 weeks ago for a 5 gal batch. I used 6 cans of frozen raspberry lemonade concentrate, 5 lbs of sugar (yikes!) and 1 lb of Light DME with a pack of Wyeast American Ale and nutrient. OG was 1.072. Tasted as I transferred to secondary and it was dry as well. I plan to add 1-2 more cans of concentrate to get a nice sweet lemonade taste (it is for SWMBO at our post wedding BBQ). I am kegging it so I will toss it in my keezer at 40 for 48 hours to halt further fermentation.

I guess what I am saying is it depends on what taste you are going for. If you are going for something sweet and similar to a strong Mike's (Pink Panty Dropper) than sweeten it up with concentrate, but if you are bottling you may have to halt any further fermentation.

I recently did a hard lemondade that sounds similar to yours. Basically you're not going to really retain sweetness from the concentrate or corn sugar/syrup because it will all ferment out. What I did that seemed to work well for me was too add some splenda and true lemon (found in the grocery store, it's basically just lemon flavor in small packets) at bottling time to taste. I do bottle so I let it ferment for about a month and made sure everything was finished before backsweetening and bottling. It was a real hit and even after a couple weeks (that's all it lasted) the sweetness was still there. Not sure if you want the carbonation or not but I only carbed some of my bottles and we had some just the way it was, both ways were a big hit and great summer drink. Good luck with it!

try adding lactose or xylitol to sweeten it a bit and it won't be so dry. also check out this thread as it should help you tremendously!

http://community.mrbeer.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=124&func=view&catid=20&id=86954

I'd add back concentrate as previously suggested. Add potassium sorbate at the same time to ensure it doesn't ferment the new stuff.

I would also avoid using adjucts that you haven't used already. They may affect the flavor a bit too drastically and since the base of this is already raspberry lemonade, why not just add more too it. The concentrate could also add the pinkish color you're looking for.

I was thinking about bottling and carbing this. So I like the idea of adding the color back to it and also the flavor but how do I carb it and add the sweetness. My thought was also splenda or xylitol and maybe a drop or two of red coloring and then adding some corn sugar for carbing. Its almost crystal clear. Would food coloring drop out also?