Carbonating a Homemade Spiked Lemonade Recipe

I am not really interested so much in "kegging," but am more interested in bottling a home made spiked lemonade recipe that my friends and I made in college. It's just cans of lemonade concentrate, vodka, and 7up, poured together into a specific formula. We used to mix it up by the gallon and have a nice cheap party drink.

Now, we are all pushing 40, and we want to have a get together, and I'd like to bottle the stuff, make some posh looking sticker/labels, and have them cold for the guys.

My problem is... I want to make them more fizzy, and in individual 12 oz bottles rather than just out in spicket cooler, getting watery as we drink it over ice out of a solo cup. So, I will need to carbonate a liquid concoction that is already partially carbonated from the 7up, is full of booze from the vodka, and full of sugar from the lemonade concentrate.

I know nothing about carbonating a beverage like this. Is it possible?
If so... is it possible to carbonate it, and then quickly bottle it?

Thanks guys!

 

I've bottled unpasteurized back-sweetened hard cider before but that uses yeast to carb it up... I think your best bet is to look into force carbing by kegging and then bottling from the keg or fill growlers from the keg. This way you'll be sure to get the fizz you're looking for.

you could try to use the 7up to help carb the bottle but it might not be enough to do the trick. Maybe make 12 oz's at a time and cap quickly. It'll probably come out flat though but it might be worth it to maybe do a couple test bottles and see how they turn out. If you can keep the soda from fizzing up a lot when you put it in the bottle you'll keep some of the gas in it and it might give you enough fizz. This would be some tedious work though. Maybe just make the drink in the 7up bottles with the 7up already in there?

Since there's no yeast involved you're going to have to probably force carbonate and bottle. Since yeast eats sugar to make both alcohol and c02 adding yeast to this concoction would be very dangerous and would cause bottle bombs and also affect the sweetness of the drink. You'd have to play around with it if you wanted to use yeast but read up on bottling back-sweetened hard cider before doing anything so you don't get hurt or make a serious mess!

Personally, I'd save yourself the headache and massive clean up and just force carbonate and package however from there. Good luck!

 

I was hoping to use a Soda Stream type thing to carbonate, and then just quickly pour into bottles and cap, without much or any head space at all.

The problem that I'm having, however, is that I do not know really anything about carbonating. I know that Soda Streams say in their instructions to not carbonate anything but plain water. This will be a very sugary, alcoholic, and acidic water. I do not know how to account for those things, and do not want to blow up my kitchen or my face.

I know that the temperature of the liquid being carbonates plays a role. But I do not know if I should chill my lemonade mixture down to as cold as I can get it, or if I should raise the temperature slightly, to 95 degrees or so, on the stove prior to giving i the fizz.

 

Honestly I can't imagine why a SodaStream gadget wouldn't work. You're just injecting CO2 into a liquid. It shouldn't matter what the liquid is. If this is a 1-shot thing you're doing, I'd try that out. You can always ebay it afterward.

If you want to do this regularly, You can get a small CO2 tank, regulator, and one of those "Carbonator" thingies and carbonate your concoction in 2 ltr soda bottles. It's the same idea as a SodaStream except not pretty to look at. Good news is that refills are cheaper too.

Check out the video here:

http://www.liquidbread.com/