Grape Lime Rickey Recipe

[MrFoodScientist]

It's probably been a while since I contributed an actual recipe, so here's a little something for you folks who don't often make it over to my blog. This grape lime rickey recipe is also posted there with a lovely photo. (I originally posted the photo here, too. But it was huge, so I'll have to resize it before I do that again.)

1.5 c sugar
1 c grape juice concentrate
Zest and Juice of 2 limes or 1/2 c lime juice and a drop of lime oil
top up to 1 gallon of carbonated water

Steep the lime zest in 1 or 2 cups of boiling water and set aside. I like to think that it's best if you cover it, but it probably doesn't matter.
Bring the sugar and juice concentrate to a boil. Then remove from heat and after a few minutes of letting it cool, add the lime juice and the water from the lime zest or the oil. This will be your syrup for adding to carbonated water.

I've also carbonated this straight up in a keg, and be forewarned that the lime oil does seem to leave a little lime smell behind.

If you're going to carbonate this with yeast, either use premiere cuvee (blue pouch from red star) or pasteur champagne (yellow pouch from red star) with some yeast nutrient to avoid any H2S.

Hope you enjoy!

 

[daft]

I dislike sprite types of bland commercial lemon lime sodas, and sometimes spike it with something to take off the curse. Recently I added a few drops of frozen lemonade concentrate, and it was fantastic. I wonder how to recreate this without the sprite (on sodastream).

Sprite just seems tasteless, so maybe I will simulate it with corn syrup and some key lime juice, then hit it with a tablespoon of lemonade concentrate (to a half liter bottle of carbed water). I normally have been adding such lemonade touches to red punch frozen concentrates.

 

[MrFoodScientist]

It may be tough to find in Hawaii, but it sounds like you need to get your hands on some San Pellegrino Limonata. Then you'll really think that regular lemon-lime sodas taste like carbonated sugar water.

 

[daft]

I love the other san pell fruit sodas, but for lemon I think they use too much bitter peel rather than juice. This is a huge temptation with at least Sorrento type lemons the size of grapefruits with super thick peels. I think the origin of Lemoncello was to find a better way to dispose of a mountain of peels than to the pigs.

In Italy, I believe my favorite beverage is a 2 liter san pell blood orange bottle, which doesn't even last me a day. I laughed recently at a women in the US having her butler(?) extract every single s.p. blood orange six pack of cans out from a sale pyramid, and told her she had excellent taste.

But the taste of US ones seem a bit tired out. Compare liters of Organics Pomegranate... sort of a Safeway store brand with real organic Italian fruit juice carbonated in US. It's killer (unlike the other flavors) and you can get big discounts via the just-for-u program.

But to circle back to your top post, I meant to transition saying I am gravitating hardcore to something in the spirit of your recipe, although with a red rather than grape base and lemon rather than lime. It's very, very refreshing and easy to make.

Grape frozen concentrate nucleates foam in sodastream like crazy without obvious cause like pulp. Also lime froz concentrate I have tried is intensely bitter. So that's why I use a red lemon punch alternative.