Hard lemonade / Skeeter 4 Summer 2019

[OpenSights]

Another option might be to let it run its course...see how it tastes once S04 peters out. If too sweet you could dilute with a bit more H20 -- which would also bring the ABV back down a bit. [emoji57]

Intended for family reunion, and people having to drive home, diluting is probably the more responsible thing to do.

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

So I'm thinking I'll try to carb by melting 1 can of limeaide concentrate, maybe with a little water, and throwing that in the bottling bucket. If it doesn't carb it'll just be back-sweetening I guess. Anybody try something like this before? I am hoping it'll reinforce the lime flavor as well.

 

[Iceman6409]

Will be starting mine near the end of April...
10cans frozen lemonade concentrate
1lbs extra Light DME
4lbs sugar
4gals spring h20 + 2bottles
1pak S04 rehydrated
2T yeast nutrient

Once done I'll Jack up 1gal with 100% Cranberry juice concentrate & another 1gal with Pomegranate.

I am wondering if you might be so kind as to let me know your step by step process for this. It looks too good to not make. Also I cannot cold crash. Let me know your thoughts

 

[Blacksmith1]

What does the DME do for this?

 

[bmd2k1]

Will be starting mine near the end of April...
10cans frozen lemonade concentrate
1lbs extra Light DME
4lbs sugar
4gals spring h20 + 2bottles
1pak S04 rehydrated
2T yeast nutrient

Once done I'll Jack up 1gal with 100% Cranberry juice concentrate & another 1gal with Pomegranate.

I am wondering if you might be so kind as to let me know your step by step process for this. It looks too good to not make. Also I cannot cold crash. Let me know your thoughts

Boil 2gals water & add the 1lb DME and 4lbs sugar -- stirring till completely dissolved. Once dissolved let cool till it reaches room temp -- use an ice bath in sink if so desired.

Rehydrate ur yeast in small container using standard protocol.

Toss lemon/limeade (thawed) into carboy/fermenter with 2gals h20.

Once "wort" reaches room temp -- add it to fermenter. Add whatever additional h20 is needed to reach 5gals level.

Take an OG reading.

Toss in yeast nutrient...and swirl fermenter.

Toss in rehydrated yeast.

Away ya go....Game on [emoji57]


--I always cold crash my S04 brews -- not doing so...S04 has an approx alcohol tolerance of 10%. So if ur OG is 1.082 u could max it out b4 FG of 1 --

Once done fermenting taste & backsweeten as ya see fit.

Cheers & Good luck [emoji111]

 

[bmd2k1]

What does the DME do for this?

Makes it a malted bev - like Mike's. Prob adds some sugar. I'm no expert...lol...just took a basic recipe posted on HBT & tweaked it a bit [emoji111]

 

[OpenSights]

Mine is bubbling away, a steady 1/second since last night. I’m thinking of 1/8 tsp on Wednesday because of the extra sugar.

 

[EricaM]

I had some frozen raspberries and the dragon blood/skeeter pee recipe looked really good, so I got a bag of mixed berries and a bottle of lemon juice to go with them. I'm a newbie at this.

2 kg bag blue/black/rasp berry blend
approx. 3 - 3.5 lb frozen raspberries
1 bottle lemon juice
2kg sugar
1 tsp. tannin
4 tsp. yeast nutrient
3 tsp. pectic enzyme

Yeast will be K1-V1116 and I'll add a tsp of energizer with it.

Sg with these ingredients was 1.030. I added 3 more kg of sugar another 1/2 bottle of lemon juice and the squeezed out juice of about 1kg of boiled golden raisins. Sg is now 1.074. Much better.

The bucket is too full to keep the raisin bag in, so I will put the bag into the blueberry wine that I have fermenting.

Nope. The blueberry is too full as well, so I will freeze it for later use. I also had to remove 2 litres of the lemon/raspberry liquid and freeze it. Looks like eventually I'll have to make an "odds & ends from the freezer" wine.

 

[Blacksmith1]

That sounds tasty. But if this is for a gallon will you have room for the juice and water with all that fruit?

 

[HiImBrian]

I like what I'm reading and think I'll give the old hard lemonade thing a go!

I've got a kolsch that I'm about ready to cold crash, which means access to loads of WLP830 lager yeast. I think I might just way over pitch and see what happens!

 

[EricaM]

That sounds tasty. But if this is for a gallon will you have room for the juice and water with all that fruit?

It's 5-6 gallons. It's a 5 gallon bucket, but I overfilled it, since fruit will be coming out after a while.

 

[EricaM]

I like what I'm reading and think I'll give the old hard lemonade thing a go!

I've got a kolsch that I'm about ready to cold crash, which means access to loads of WLP830 lager yeast. I think I might just way over pitch and see what happens!

That sounds interesting. I'm interested in hearing about how that works out for you.

 

[EricaM]

I put yeast in mine yesterday morning, realized the bucket was too full to put the lid on and then had to scoop out some liquid. The yeast got mixed under the surface when I did this. No yeast smell and no bubbles at all today.

A few hours ago, I removed more liquid from the bucket and transferred about 2 cups of liquid from my super-actively-fermenting blueberry wine into the lemon-berry. I hope it starts something. I'm a little worried that it won't like the acid difference. I'll be away for a couple of days and don't think I have time to get any more yeast before I leave.

Edit: I just dug the yeast package out of the garbage. There were about 5 grains of yeast still in the corner, so I added those as well with some energizer. Really hoping for bubbles before I leave tonight.

 

[Blacksmith1]

Just about the time i thought i'd have to repitch, mine took off. Hopefully yours will do the same.

 

[EricaM]

Just about the time i thought i'd have to repitch, mine took off. Hopefully yours will do the same.

Thanks.

I just went down and removed the fruit bag and some of the juice from the lemon-berry to make room in the fermenter. Then transferred the bag of blueberries from the bubbling blueberry wine into the lemon-berry and added some of the fermenting blueberry wine as well. Dumped the leftover juice from the lemon-berry into the blueberry wine to get it back up to 5 gallon mark. I'm hoping this will get the lemon started.

Too bad I have to be away. I should have timed this better.

 

[EricaM]

I just went down and removed the fruit bag and some of the juice from the lemon-berry to make room in the fermenter. Then transferred the bag of blueberries from the bubbling blueberry wine into the lemon-berry and added some of the fermenting blueberry wine as well. Dumped the leftover juice from the lemon-berry into the blueberry wine to get it back up to 5 gallon mark. I'm hoping this will get the lemon started.

The lemon has airlock movement. :happydance:

 

[bmd2k1]

Cheers! This bad boy is awesome - it's my Extra Tart -- added acid blend & pure Lime Juice Concentrate. Lip puckering goooooood [emoji111]

 

[EricaM]

Racked the wine off the fruit today. Probably could have left it a couple more days. Still airlock movement, but slowed down. Sg 1.016 (originally 1.074). I tasted it and it doesn't taste very good. I don't taste the lemon at all. I'll try it again next time I rack it, but at the moment I'm thinking I'll need to add some kind of fruit syrup when I bottle it.

I racked my blueberry today as well and it tastes fantastic. Too sweet, but it's still working...

 

[OpenSights]

9 days in and still chugging away.... nowhere close to secondary.

 

[Blacksmith1]

I haven't even looked at mine yet.....

 

[EricaM]

Yeah... I think I jumped the gun a bit. My husband wanted his work bench back to cut some wood and not sure how many days until I'd get it back, so if I had to move the wine, then I thought I would rack it now too. I didn't want to leave it a long time with the mushy fruit. How long is it ok to leave it in the bucket with the mushy berries? (for next time).

I'm sure it will be fine anyway. I'll just have fun cleaning yeast out of a carboy instead of a bucket. The wines are both pretty colors, that's for sure.

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

My batch is still bubbling away, will likely give it another 10 days at least, I have a bottle-neck in packaging in my pipeline right now and the limeaide is happy to bubbly away so that's fine by me.

 

[Blacksmith1]

I've only done one "on the fruit" so far. I left it 2 weeks. That was April. I'll let you know in Oct. How it worked.

 

[bmd2k1]

Sipping my pomegranate CrazyTrain hard lemonade -- great stuff [emoji111]

 

[CallyBrewster]

Racked the wine off the fruit today. Probably could have left it a couple more days. Still airlock movement, but slowed down. Sg 1.016 (originally 1.074). I tasted it and it doesn't taste very good. I don't taste the lemon at all. I'll try it again next time I rack it, but at the moment I'm thinking I'll need to add some kind of fruit syrup when I bottle it.

I racked my blueberry today as well and it tastes fantastic. Too sweet, but it's still working...

I just checked my Cranberry-lime as well. Finally down to 1.002, just a few more points to go. Mine tasted better at .002 than it did at .016, so hopefully yours will start appealing to you as the last little sugar ferments away.

I'm kind of agog at the amount of backsweetening sugar in the original recipe. I suspect I won't use quite so much and will probably go for a barely sweet option.

 

[EricaM]

I just checked my Cranberry-lime as well. Finally down to 1.002, just a few more points to go. Mine tasted better at .002 than it did at .016, so hopefully yours will start appealing to you as the last little sugar ferments away.

I'm kind of agog at the amount of backsweetening sugar in the original recipe. I suspect I won't use quite so much and will probably go for a barely sweet option.

Thanks for letting me know your experience. Hope mine is better at lower sg as well.

If I sweeten, I may use lime syrup. I generally don't like sweet wine, but have a couple of people in my family who do. If they drink this, maybe they'll stay out of my blueberry.

I have a question. If I wanted to make the lemon sparkling and sweet, how could I do this? If I add campden, then it will stop the yeast, so I can't let it keep fermenting in the bottles to make co2.
If I don't add campden, then it will ferment dry in the bottles, right?

I've never done this before. I had a sweet wine kit that I put the sulfites into, then bagged and refrigerated. After a couple of weeks, I put some in flip top bottles with sugar to see if it would carbonate. It seems to be doing something, because I popped the top of one after a few days and got steam that came out. So... maybe it works even with the campden?

Edit: I checked sg again just now. Lemon-raspberry is .098 and still working. It is starting to taste a bit better.
Blueberry is 1.019. I didn't taste the blueberry, but it's still fizzing away as well.

 

[CallyBrewster]

I have a question. If I wanted to make the lemon sparkling and sweet, how could I do this? If I add campden, then it will stop the yeast, so I can't let it keep fermenting in the bottles to make co2.
If I don't add campden, then it will ferment dry in the bottles, right?

Yeah, the problem is you can bottle still, sweet stuff, or you can bottle dry fizzy stuff, but sweet, fizzy is problematic. Sadly, the original Skeeter Pee recipe only shows how to sweeten.

The cider makers in this forum who are bottle carbing sweet cider that is meant to be fizzy do it by 1) fermenting out or cold crashing, 2) racking, 3) back sweetening, 4) bottle carbing and then 5) pasteurizing. There's a sticky at the top of the forum that has very detailed steps for this.

I've never tried pasteurizing as I don't have bottling equipment at all, just kegs. I'll be force carbing my batch in one of those half-sized 2.5 gallon corny kegs, with the expectation that I may still have a mild ferment going on.

Note that if you decide to go the potassium stabilization route, I think you need both the potassium metabisulfite and the potassium sorbate, not just the campden tablets. This thread might help: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/cider-sweetness.68481/#post-1000661

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

Just tried the first bottle of my limeaide. Pretty impressed honestly it has the limey hint at the beginning and end with a bit of heat throughout.

I added a scored jalapeno tot he bottling bucket when I bottled and I think the touch of heat is nice, really a backdrop to the lime and alcohol, but there if you know where to taste.

 

[Blacksmith1]

.....makes it fool proof [emoji12]

You obviously don't know the same fools I do.....

 

[bmd2k1]

Gonna jack up 1gal with some jalapenos [emoji111]