Cheap & Simple Lemonade!

[second2none]

To make 5L of this hard lemonade you'll need

2 Teaspoons of Wine Yeast
1L of Robinsons SUGAR FREE Lemon
1 Lemon
Yeast Nutient
460g White sugar



1) Put a few spoonfuls of sugar in a glass with yeast and yeast nutient with some luke warm water, stir and cover with clingfilm
2) Pour Robinsons lemon into a large pan and gently simmer for about 20mins
3) Add Sugar to the pan, 460g gives you round about 5% and a OG of 1.040
4) Add a few pints of cold water to the lemon Sugar mix, so its cool enough to transfur to ur demijohn
5) Pour liquid into your demijohn
6) For extra lemony goodness I sliced up 1 whole unwaxed lemom and poked the slices into the demijohn
7) Add the yeaster starter you made in stage one
8 ) Top up demijohn to about two inches from the top with cold water
9) Put airlock on your demijohn and leave somewhere warmish to ferment

After About a week I racked off to remove the sediment and lemon slices
and left it a few more days till it finished fermenting then batched primed with about 45g of white sugar and bottled it.
After about a week I tasted it and to be honest it was BAD!
But the big secret I found out was when the cloudiness drops after about 2 weeks ur left with a much clearer better tasting enjoyable drink! Use the sugar free version becuse it contains artifical sweetners to keep ur brew sweet rather than fermentable sugars in the nornal one!

I was attempting to get something like smirnoooff ice, but not quiet there yet, so feel free to tweek the recipe and let us know what u think/did!

ITS NOT BAD AT ALL FOR 10 pints for under £2

[Curious Brew]

Liking the sound of this.

[Twistedfinger]

You had me until you mentioned Smirnooooff ice

[Snipersunset]

SWMBO fancies some of this so it'll be on by the end of the week. All sounds straight forward, but here comes the stupid question, how do I get the lemon out of my glass demi- Jon if I have to squeeze it in?

Cheers

[Pinto]

Substitute with a few TSP of lemon juice at the end of fermentation - should work as well.

[Snipersunset]

Obvious when you say it out loud, or type it in this case. Cheers pinto

[WalesAles]

but here comes the stupid question, how do I get the lemon out of my glass demi- Jon if I have to squeeze it in?

Cheers

Sniper,
Cut the Lemon into smaller pieces?

WA

[Snipersunset]

Didn't know if it needed big chunks ha ha

[WalesAles]

Didn't know if it needed big chunks ha ha

Snipe,
That is a very valid point from a scientific view!
Are 10 big chunks better than 20 smaller chunks? HaHa!

WA

[Pinto]

Flavour transfer is about surface area - smaller the pieces, the better

[Snipersunset]

I'll just juice the bloody thing then ha ha

[WalesAles]

I'll just juice the bloody thing then ha ha

WA

[marcarm]

I made this yesterday, but I think I may have killed my yeast as I have no activity yet at all.

I made some TC at the same time, and this has a nice krausen on it, but nothing from the lemonade at all. I did bring it to the boil and simmer for 20 mins as per the OP, but there is not even a smell of carbon dioxide coming from it. I have roused it a couple of times. I'm thinking I didn't drive off the preservatives

Going to leave it a couple of days and see, if not I'll get another one going. this is for a August BBQ so want to get it made soon.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Get some krausen from your turbo cider and pitch that in.

[Pinto]

There has been some discussion on how effective boiling is at denaturing sulphates/sulphites so its possible that your yeast lost the battle. Personally, I'd try a repitch - make sure to use a yeast nutrient, or a yeast mixed with nutrient like Young's super wine yeast - I've never had a failure with the Young's

Additional : a quick look at the web reveals sulphites can be significantly reduced by aeration (that's why a lot of wines are allowed to "breathe") so maybe for future production, a blast on a hand blender whilst boiling the squash/juice may be effective ? I'm going to try it on my next batch.