My Hard Lemonade Experiment

Keeping in mind that I have very little experience.....


My Wife and I were cleaning the cupboard out and I found about 3/4 lb of extra light dme that had been forgotten.

One drink led to another... and the next thing you know we had a pot boiling with some water, a cup of sugar and a cup of dme. We sanitized a 1gallon jug, stopper and a airlock, filled it about half way with cold water. Added two cans of IGA frozen lemonade (with no preservatives) to the cooling pot on the stove. Mixed everything into the jug and added a pack of champagne yeast. Stirred well.

I didn't take any measurements....but we had a good time and caught a pretty good buzz.

We'll see how it turns out. I don't have much invested in it.

sounds tasty keep us updated

I am proud to say it is happily bubbling away.

congrats it sounds like it will be great

sampled this today and smells like paint thinner/solvent..... ?

just let it be you get all sorts of odors during fermentation. are you going to be carbing it when its done?

demonrichie said:

just let it be you get all sorts of odors during fermentation. are you going to be carbing it when its done?

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I was planning on it. It's still bubbling merrilly away

are you gonna backsweeten?

demonrichie said:

are you gonna backsweeten?

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I'm assuming that means adding some sugar after the fermentation process is finished?

I have never made this before. What should I do to salvage it?

it should be fine but it wont be sweet cause the sugar will ferment. to sweeten afterwards us an unfermentable sugar or a sweetner. many people swear on splenda for sweetning and im prolly gona use it for my apfelwein.

Check the SG. If it's above 1.020, I'd stir it up abit. It should NOT taste like paint thinner- that's a sign of stressed yeast. If it's under 1.020, I'd rack it to a carboy, top up to protect it from oxidation, and hope for the best. It should taste pretty good at this point.

Try priming with lactose, milk sugar, along with corn sugar. Lactose is only partially fermentable so you will have some sugars left over to sweeten the stuff back up.

Gravity was at 1.022 so I stirred it up.

It tasted ok.... definately gonna need some sweetening.

ya but how fermentable is lactose? is it a significant enough amount to cause bottle bombs? how much would you adjust the corn sugar?

Any sugar is significant enough to cause bottle bombs, just control the amount you put in, and use measured amounts. If I was doing this hard lemonade I would:
Rack off 2 bottles and prime with 50/50 mixture of corn sugar/lactose (3/4 tsp per bottle) let it do its thing, open em up for samplong and adjust the mixture for flavor and carbonation, then repeat as necessary. Your "lemonade" should be fine in the fermenter while you figure your bottling ratio.
You could also, since you just strarted with a gallon, mix up 4 or 5 priming mixtures, bottle prime, mark each bottle with you used and let condition. Then sample each one, find the one you like and scale up for a larger batch.

Just make sure your fermentation is over, take a hydrometer twice do not just look at the airlock. That fruit sugar can be touchy. Leave it to hang out, and add priming sugar and you will have bottle bombs.

Awesome. Let us know your final flavor. I did a similar experiment recently 1 gallon, 1.25lbs corn sugar, 2 cans minute maid lemonade, 2.5g montrachet yeast. i added one can of lemonade up front to try to keep acid level down a little and added 2nd can @ 4 weeks. tastes pretty good when i tried it last about 2 weeks ago (had minor signs of some fermenting yet). i think my og with 1 can was 1.082, so it'll pack a little wallop. i think with 1 g i won't carb it and am thinking about adding some lactose to bring the body up.

Just so I'm clear on carbing this.

I wait until fermentation is completely finished. Determined by a consistent gravity over a period of a few days?

Then carb with 3/4 tsp cornsugar/lactose / 12 oz bottle. Adjust the ratio of cornsugar/lactose for carb/sweetness? with the cornsugar providing the fermentable and the lactose providing the backsweetner?

I really don't want bombs. I have some plastic carbonated beverage bottles I plan on using and will store inside a cooler just in case. What a sticky mess this would make.

Your fermentation step is correct.

A few words about the sugars, if I may:

3/4 tsp is what you will get if you divide down from the recommended amount of corn sugar for a 5 gallon batch. Pointing that out so you know where I am getting the baseline from.

Lactose is a milk sugar that has some non-fermentable sugars in it. The yeast will not it.

So if you mix the two 50-50, you will actually LESS fermentable sugar then if you used straight corn sugar. Just trying to point out that the risk of bottle bombs is not any greater here, then say a normal batch of beer.

That is what I would do, and I may be starting it out tomorrow, if I do I will keep you posted on my results.

OsbornBrewing said:

Your fermentation step is correct.

A few words about the sugars, if I may:

3/4 tsp is what you will get if you divide down from the recommended amount of corn sugar for a 5 gallon batch. Pointing that out so you know where I am getting the baseline from.

Lactose is a milk sugar that has some non-fermentable sugars in it. The yeast will not it.

So if you mix the two 50-50, you will actually LESS fermentable sugar then if you used straight corn sugar. Just trying to point out that the risk of bottle bombs is not any greater here, then say a normal batch of beer.

That is what I would do, and I may be starting it out tomorrow, if I do I will keep you posted on my results.

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Just an update. I stirred up the jug. It is bubbling away like mad again. So obviously it's not done yet.

Were going camping over the weekend so I will just let it do its thing and will play with it next week.

Thanks for all of the help everyone.

Four day weekend.....:rockin:

Don't confuse airlock activity with fermentation activity. The only way to know for sure is a hydrometer reading. Stirring up my just be releasing CO2 that dissolved in the wort during fermentation, or a myriad of other reasons.

Be sure to get gravity readings.

CHEERS!

Well, this didn't really go as planned..... lol

Wifes sister came over tonight and said whats that... popped the cap off the jug .... Oh, that smells good....

One thing led to another and we ended up dissolving a cup of sugar in some water, racked it over to a bottling bucket, filled three glasses with crushed ice... and long story short, it tasted pretty damn good with the enchiladas.

Any way, it didn't get carbed, no gravity readings, but it hit the spot.

I don't know if I'd want five gallons of it but will definatley do another gallon batch in the future.