The Experimenter
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- Dec 5, 2020
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I know this is the cider forum but I figured it was the most appropriate forum to post this question in since it's about brewing another fruit (I mean grapes are fruits too, but wine is its own category that I'm pretty sure lemonade would not fall under).
Anyway, my question is: Does fermented/brewed lemonade have a specific name, like how fermented apple juice is "cider" or fermented honey water is "mead"? Is there a name for the beverage which is lemonade that has been fermented with brewer's yeast?
Whenever I look on Google I never find anything. If I search "fermented lemonade" I get a bunch of health stuff about "fermenting" your lemonade with "probiotic-rich whey" to create an ultra healthy drink with plenty of "flora"... not what I'm looking for. If I search "brewed lemonade" I again get health posts mixed with the occasional brewing recipe like this one: Homebrewed Hard Lemonade - BrewTogether as well as the occasional post in forums on this site and others saying to not even bother trying it because the acid will just kill the yeast (but I quickly discovered those posts were false because I started a brew with Full Circle Market all natural lemonade and Safale S-04 a few days ago and it has been going strong since, even after I dry pitched only 1/4 of the packet... so far, when taking samples for hydrometer testing, it has tasted great). Anyway aside from those occasional recipes and occasional posts about how it won't work (even though it DEFINITELY can work), I haven't seen anything about what you would call a lemonade based brew. I want to know what type of brew this is so when I hand my buddies a bottle of it I can say, "This is my latest batch of...", of what?
I know "Hard" Lemonade is a category (which is what the person who made the above link called his brew), but pretty much every commercial Hard Lemonade I have ever seen is lemonade spiked with vodka, whiskey, or another distilled spirit. So correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think Hard Lemonade is the correct term... unless it is the term used to refer to both brewed and spike lemonade? Or is there just no term at all because people don't do it frequently enough for it to have a name?
Anyway, my question is: Does fermented/brewed lemonade have a specific name, like how fermented apple juice is "cider" or fermented honey water is "mead"? Is there a name for the beverage which is lemonade that has been fermented with brewer's yeast?
Whenever I look on Google I never find anything. If I search "fermented lemonade" I get a bunch of health stuff about "fermenting" your lemonade with "probiotic-rich whey" to create an ultra healthy drink with plenty of "flora"... not what I'm looking for. If I search "brewed lemonade" I again get health posts mixed with the occasional brewing recipe like this one: Homebrewed Hard Lemonade - BrewTogether as well as the occasional post in forums on this site and others saying to not even bother trying it because the acid will just kill the yeast (but I quickly discovered those posts were false because I started a brew with Full Circle Market all natural lemonade and Safale S-04 a few days ago and it has been going strong since, even after I dry pitched only 1/4 of the packet... so far, when taking samples for hydrometer testing, it has tasted great). Anyway aside from those occasional recipes and occasional posts about how it won't work (even though it DEFINITELY can work), I haven't seen anything about what you would call a lemonade based brew. I want to know what type of brew this is so when I hand my buddies a bottle of it I can say, "This is my latest batch of...", of what?
I know "Hard" Lemonade is a category (which is what the person who made the above link called his brew), but pretty much every commercial Hard Lemonade I have ever seen is lemonade spiked with vodka, whiskey, or another distilled spirit. So correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think Hard Lemonade is the correct term... unless it is the term used to refer to both brewed and spike lemonade? Or is there just no term at all because people don't do it frequently enough for it to have a name?