Advice on Lemon Shandy

[BakerBrew]

I brewed a Shandy/Radler, and was wondering what you think about this recipe and how it could turn out.

3.0 lbs Extra Light DME
2.0 lbs Wheat DME
1.0 lb Crystal 10L
0.5 lb. Orange Blossom Honey
-added after initial ferm subsides

1.0 oz Ger. Hallertau 2.7% AA 60 min
0.5 oz """ 10 min
0.5 oz """ 0 min

WLP001 California Ale yeast

1.0 oz Sweet orange peel (dried). 5 min
1.0 oz Lemon peel (dried). 5 min
1.2 oz Frozen lemon peel. 5min
1 Whirlfloc tablet. 15 min

I froze a lemon solid and once thawed slightly I broke the peel from the meat and let it thaw to release aromatics.
I then peeled 2 more organic lemons and froze them. These three peeled, frozen lemons will be thawed and broken up to be added in the bottling bucket. The honey will be added 5-6 days after pitching the yeast (which was pitched at 70F.)

5 gal batch
O.G. = 1.045
Est. ABV = 4.8% - 5.0%.

Thoughts? Has anyone done something similar with this method of adding lemons?

 

[Silentdrinker]

I make cream of 3 and a hard lemonade. I serve them separate but those who want shandy mix them.

I keep it simple.

8 Frozen juice containers (lemonade, limeade, rasp. Lemon...etc)
1 lb DME
3 LB corn sugar

Heat, Dissolve, chill... Ferment room temp for 3 weeks (I use Nottingham)

Chill, gelatin to clear, rack into a clean keg onto potassium sorbate and 2 cans of juice and some dissolved sugar. I try to keep it almost dry but just enough sweetness to notice, but not linger.

It's pretty damn good hard lemonade. I don't really like the shandy, but my friends go crazy over it. That's why I do it separate. Everyone goes crazy over the lemonade. It's funny seeing beer drinking men's eyebrows raise as they drink this stuff.

I recently made 50 gallons about a month ago. I did regular lemonade, passion fruit lemonade and orange passion lemonade.

Some is for my buddies wedding, the rest is for my summer stash.

 

[BakerBrew]

Silentdrinker, what kind of juice do you use for the lemon? It is essentially a frozen purée, juice from (or not from) concentrate?

It would be awesome to get a full lemon flavor using all-natural methods. In your opinion, do you think I should add one lemon to my primary maybe 2 days before I bottle? Then at bottling, add 3 more lemons and then them sit in the beer for maybe 30 min?

Do you think that would produce a good lemon backing to the beer or do you think it might be too tart or sour? Though a tart summer ale would be cool.

 

[burnsie8791]

I've blended skeeter pee in very basic wheat ale. Was shandy like. Be careful of the blend it can get boozy in a hurry. I did 25% skeeter pee and 75% beer.

 

[Silentdrinker]

Silentdrinker, what kind of juice do you use for the lemon? It is essentially a frozen purée, juice from (or not from) concentrate?

Yes, store brand frozen juice concentrate in a tube. Normally it's juice and sugar.

It would be awesome to get a full lemon flavor using all-natural methods. In your opinion, do you think I should add one lemon to my primary maybe 2 days before I bottle? Then at bottling, add 3 more lemons and then them sit in the beer for maybe 30 min?

You can use the green bottle of lemon juice (Costco sells it in larger bottles) like mentioned below, you can look at the skeeter pee recipe and tone it down some. It uses lemon juice. I just take the simple route. You can boil with lemon zest, add lemon, add juice...etc.

Do you think that would produce a good lemon backing to the beer or do you think it might be too tart or sour? Though a tart summer ale would be cool.

Possibly good, possibly too much. I can't say from experience. I know if you're not getting the tartness you want, you can add acid to it. I do when the flavored lemonade I make isn't acidic enough. You would use a citric acid.

You can also experiment with makeing the beer, take a measured sample then add measured samples of lemon juice right into the glass. Once you have what you want, size it up and pour it in. I keg, so it's easier for me. I assume you bottle still. But you can do it before you bottle and add the juice to the bucket.

I did a grapefruit wheat with zest in the boil and grape fruit juice in the wort during fermenting. It was pretty good and well reviewed by family and friends.

You might learn a thing or two from a recipe. I think there is a lemon lime Hefeweizen recipe that has a lot of attention and positive reviews. Do a search for that.

 

[BakerBrew]

I could taste test with the lemon juice. However, I'd rather not dilute if possible. The honey added to primary ferm will bump up the ABV a little (by about 0.4%). So if it came to adding to juice, I could add 1 lb of honey compared to 0.5 lb in order to compensate.

But I think I will try out the frozen lemon idea. I haven't heard of anyone using this technique, so I'm curious as to what will result.

At my local HBS, I heard about a guy who once froze a whole lemon and then zested the entire lemon into the wort during the last few minutes of the boil. Apparently the brew turned out well. This is where I started with the frozen lemon idea because on brew day, I realized very quickly I didn't own a grater...

Has anyone else heard of doing this with freezing lemons? I'm worried my brew will turn out like a lemon head candy.

 

[Silentdrinker]

I think the amount of lemon juice you would add would hardly result in much dilution. And I see no reason to freeze the lemon to zest it. I just use a potato peeler to get the color off the surface with out getting the white.

 

[BakerBrew]

What would be a good amount of lemon juice to add? 4 cups?

 

[BakerBrew]

Added 3 frozen lemons to primary today. I thaw them a bit and crushed them before adding straight to primary after 10 days of fermentation.

O.G. = 1.049
S.G. = 1.007
ABV = 5.6%

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1432860363.165013.jpg

I plan on letting the lemons sit in primary for 3 days and then bottle, where I will add the other 4 frozen lemons. Will post more pics soon.

 

[Silentdrinker]

What would be a good amount of lemon juice to add? 4 cups?

I didn't see this response, sorry I didn't reply. But for about 5 gal, I use 8 frozen juices along with 1 lb of extra light DME and 3lb of corn sugar. I'll adjust the corn sugar to adjust the ABV I want.

You're going to want to back sweeten this for two reasons

1) It'll be a bit tart and very dry with out it
2) back sweetening with the juice gives it the lemonade flavor since fermenting it out lends it to be a bit watery tasting.

What I do is add my potassium sorbate along with a simple sugar and a couple of the frozen juices thawed out. The amount depends on your preference. I like to keep it as dry as I can. I get it to where it's sweet enough to the tongue while you drink it, but the sweetness doesn't linger after you swallow.

I cold crash for a couple days then heat up some water, sugar, juice and add the potassium sorbate into it. I then dump it into my keg and transfer onto it. Then I get it cold again, dump some gelatin in to clear it (it gets crystal clear In 24hr) and force carb.

You can do the same but transfer onto it into the bottling bucket, but this will leave you with a stlill lemonade. Or you can sweeten it, let it carb and then pasteurize it to stop carbonation. There's a thread on that topic if you search.