HELP!!! Hard Limeade

Trying to make a hard limeade for my wife and her friends. I've been brewing for 4 years have never had problem getting fermention to start. I went to local hbs store they suggested using lalvin 1118 for my yeast for this. So here is my reciepe as well as what I did.
10 cans limeade concentrate.
10 lbs cane sugar
4 gallons purified water'
Lalvin 1118 yeast.
5 campden tablets.
I combined the 10 cans of concentrate, 10 lbs of sugar and 3 gallons of water together inmy bottling bucket. I transfered this over into 5 gallon carboy droped 5 campden tablets in per instruction from lbs to kill any nasty that might be in sugar let sit for 30 hours then rehydrated yeast with 2 tbs of yeast nutrient. I added this to fermenter as well as 3 more tbs of nutrient and another pkg of lalvin 1118 yeast. Went to bed this was around 1 am got up at 8 and had all kinds of limeade form in airlock. Cleaned out airlock and when I got back home 12 hrs later I had no action in fermenter. I took my stirrer that hooks to drill and stirred this for 5 minutes.
and reattached air lock. Got up next morning still nothing as far as air lock. I restired again and didn't get any action again in 12 hours. I got up the next morning and stirred the limeade and added a pkg of nottingham yeast and now that it has been 2 days and I'm still not seeing anything I need HELP!!
What do I need to do to get fermention started.

Are you certain there are no preservatives in the Limeade?

I am drawing a blank here. Have you taken any gravity readings? What do they indicate? Is the vessel leaking, and hence not showing activity via the airlock? Just suggesting avenues of approach. What temperature?

Well, lemonade was my hardest ferment ever to get going, because of the acidity, the yeast didnt' like it at all. So, check the ingredients on the limeade can, just to make sure there isn't any sorbate. check with your hydrometer just to see where you're at, too.

Then, if it's still not going, get a fresh package of wine yeast (the 1118 is fine), and take out some of your must. Rehydrate the yeast in water and a pinch of sugar, and then when that's nice and foamy, add a teaspoon of your must. Dilute the must that you've already removed for this, and add some more diluted must a little at a time, every couple of hours, until it's going well and not stopping. Then add some straight must a little bit, the same way. In three days, you should really be going.

Checked reading nothing going on. I checked before purchasing the limeade for sorbates and did not see on label anywhere. My concern was campden tablets as I have never used before. Local guy said just drop them in when I wasn't seeing any signs of fermentation I googled the tablets and it said to crush them. I would of thought that they would of dissolved by the time I added the nottingham yeast but then since I still didn't get signs I came to place that I was sure could help. I will boil a little sugar and rehydrate a yeast with some nutrient and start adding some of the limeade must. Thanks for the help.

The campden isn't a problem- I use it in all of my wines. It's the acidity that causes the problems with lime/lemonade. Yeast don't like a terribly acidic environment, and don't do well without a starter in that situation. If you really "baby" a starter, and get it going well, and graduallly add more must, it'll eventually acclimate to its environment and work out ok. It definitely was my most challenging fermentation.

Thanks again got a starter going now will keep adding a little more corn sugar as well as nutrient and must to get it going. I've never had a problem with beer but wanted to try something different. Will make big starters for stuff like this from now on.

BigAl said:

Thanks again got a starter going now will keep adding a little more corn sugar as well as nutrient and must to get it going. I've never had a problem with beer but wanted to try something different. Will make big starters for stuff like this from now on.

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I wouldn't use any corn sugar now that it's going a little (the starter, I mean). You want to acclimate it to the acidity, and the simple sugars in corn sugar won't do that. Now that it's going, just use a little diluted must, gradually increasing the amount and strength, until in a couple of days you're adding straight must.

Ok. I'll do that.

This is good to know, I am always looking for new alcohols for the SWMBO who has celiacs. I would have thought it was the tablets also, but that most likely stems from the fact that I have never used them.

Well I've been babying my starter along since the other night. Just got home from work and added a little stright must this time to see if it will continue to go. Will keep adding until I go to bed then add to fermenter in the morning. Only other question is do I need to dump or do you think it will be ok since it has set it fermenter now for a week? Tastes sweet because of sugar but I don't detect any other off flavors.

I've had to do the same procedure Yooper described to get a batch of finicky mead yeast going. No matter what I did, adding nutrient, aerating the crap out of it, pitching more yeast, nothing seemed to help. So what I did was made an apple juice starter in one carboy and slowly added the mead must from the other carboy onto it over a period of a few days.

Perhaps a tacky solution but my friends really like this.

Mix enough Boiled water and enough cane sugar to make a gallon at SG 1.090. Somewhere around 32 oz. of cane sugar is what I use. Adjust it with more sugar or more water to hit the 1.090
Add
1/2 teaspoon yeast nutrient and put it all in a gallon carboy. If you can pour it high to splash it good if not aerate it either with a stirrer or an air stone.
Rehydrate a package of KV1-1116 and pitch it in the car boy.
Stir
Top it with an airlock.

shake it a little once a day for the first 3 days then leave it alone. In about 2 weeks it should be down to a FG of 0.997. rack it off the lees and let it clear for another week. Rack it again and you now have what someone told me is called Vodka light or almost 13% alcohol and water. I keep it in 1 and 2 liter soda bottles.

Now you have what you need to make a good hard lemon or limeade.

(1)12 oz can of lime or lemonade concentrate.
32 oz of Vodka light
20 oz water
Makes 64 oz of 6% ABV hard lime or lemonade. Store in the fridge.
If you want it with more alcohol then use more of the VL and less water.

I mixed this up for a party once and its been a big demand from my friends and my Kids friends. This crowd used to be Mikes Hard Lemonade drinkers. Now they want mine.

Yes I know its not the same a brewing it from the actual lemon or lime juice but you get more fruit flavor this way. You don't have to worry about preservatives because you are through with the fermenting part. You could stabilize it and bottle it if you wanted to. One of these days I'm going to try bottling some without stabilizing it and see if it sparkles of just explodes

we did the same thing with concentrated apple juice but it wasn't as good. For that I still make it straight from apples.

It may be cheating but you are making the alcohol and you could make the lemon/limeade from scratch to add to it instead of the concentrate. The point is its fast and its good.

For those that like data

OK Ill admit I went nuts with the SG readings It was my first batch fermenting anything.

Anyway give it a try if you like. It worked for me.

Well I've got action started on Friday in air lock. It's slowing a little about every 5 seconds. I've read somewhere on here that you need to re aireate the must to keep fermentation going. Should I wait a while or go ahead and do this now.