im a newbie lookin for a simple hard lemonade recipe

hi , i as said im relatively new to home brewing, ive made some pretty decent beer and some good wine , but all from kits bought in the store. so as i was mixing up my latest batch of red wine i was having a drink of vodka and lemonade, and it occurred to me i should be able to make a batch of hard lemonade (like mikes hard lemonade) using a fairly similar process that i was using to make wine. SO I FOUND THIS SITE IN MY search of the net, i checked out a couple recipes, i was hoping someone might provide a somewhat simple recipe for me. i figured just making a batch of lemonade and adding yeast would work, i thought that i could check the starting gravity would provide me with a idea of the finished alcohool content , i never thought i would have to add sugar/dextrose, but now i see i may have to, i thought there would have been enough sugar in the regular lemonade concentrate mix. and i never thought to add malt extract,because i do not really want a beer/malt tasting drink ,is it possible to make it without the malt extract? so it appears i do need some help.i do want it carbonated like mikes, so i guess i do have to prime the bottle before bottling but im a bit worried about exploding bottles. i see there seems to be quite a few knowlegable folks on here, so im hoping for some help. i hope my questions dont seem to stupid, any help would be greatly appreaciated

Search this forum with the Search function above. This question gets asked by a newbie at least once a month. There's certainly a lot of help and thoughts that have been put into this topic but the bottom line as far as I'm concerned is that it's more trouble than it's worth. I'd rather spend that time brewing beer that's actually superior to what I can buy at the store and then buy a handle of vodka, some countrytime powder, and slice up a fresh lemon and make for a better tasting hard lemonade than I could ever brew...

Cheers!

ok thanks ill have a look around

and it wasn't mentioned in that thread, but unless you want it to be insanely dry, you'll need to stop the yeast from fermenting all the sugars. That means you'll need a CO2 system to carbonate it. You won't be able to bottle carb the recipe posted above.

ok , so bottle carbing is not an option because the high sugar content? , to stop the fermenting you would have to use potassium sorbate , which makes co2 the only option for carbing

I've made it and my recipe is here somewhere. I'll see if I can find it. There were a couple of issues I had. One is that it's very acidic, so it's hard to really get fermentation going. You need to make a yeast starter (very easy!) and get it going well before you pitch that into the must.

The issue with not being able to carbonate is NOT due to the high sugar content. What happens is, it ferments to dry. If you want to sweeten, you use sorbate to prevent re-fermentation. That works well, but then you don't have the ability to bottle carbonate.

I'll find my notes, too, to go along with this recipe. If you have trouble understanding it, just let me know! My notes make sense to me, but probably not to anyone else!

Here's a thread with it: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=35661&highlight=hard+lemonade

thanks yooper, i'll let ya know if i go through with it

it is worth making - all my friends keep asking for it.

Or you let it ferment dry then back-sweeten it with a non-fermentable sugar mixed with a small dose of fermentable sugar to allow bottle conditioning. I imagine lactose would be pretty tasty in a hard lemonade. Maybe with a little vanilla?

ok cheese or anyone who wants to help, question, if i understand, i should sweeten the whole batch to desired sweetness ( with unfermentable sugar , any recomendations what type os sugar to use?) once i get a stable gravity. then prime the bottles with fermentable sugar.when priming should i use the same amount of sugar as you would with regular beer? and would there be enough yeast left after getting it to a stable gravity to ferment the sugar in the bottles? i guess what i mean is, does the yeast ever go inactive, or if i added more sugar to the batch after i had a stable gravity would it start working again , these might seem like stupid questions to some seasoned brewers but im relativley new to this, thanks in advance

Lactose and Splenda are common sugars used to backsweeten.

i use 1 1/2 - 2 cups lactose for sweetening and prime at the same rate as for beer.
i also add 1/2 pack of rehydrated lavlin ec-1118 yeast to my bottling bucket to ensure carbonation. maybe its overkill but i don't want to take a chance that the original yeast is pooped out from the high og and acidic environment of the fermentation.

I use ale yeast, malt extract, and backsweeten with Splenda. The reason for the ale yeast and malt extract is so it doesn't finish as dry. It does not lend a "beer" or even "malt" taste to the finished product.

I've also found splenda to just work as a more effective sweetener than lactose, but that's just my experience.

I'm quite happy with my last batch that's still fermenting/aging. It started right around 1.044 and seems like it's halted at 1.010. This won't need much, if any, to backsweeten.

i thank you all, im going to give this recipe a try

fwiw - I tried to make it using fesh lemons and few limes. I added Dextrose and Lactose and used ale yeast. I didn't get very much lemon flavor out of it. I ad to add concentrate to the secondary and I didn't add enough lactose to give it that residual sweetness level that people associate with a Mike's Hard Lemonade. Added Splenda at bottling and everyone (myself included) can detect it in the final product. Its got that diet soda sweetness twang to it. To date this was my worst batch of brewing, but don't let that deter you. I would try to avoid the Splenda if you can...