Hard Lemonade?

pink-mist

I've done a few batches of beer (20L) and Just bottled my first gallon attempt at wine which turned out lovely and fruity.

Just wondering though, is there a way to buy one of those big 3L bottles of lemonade from tescos and say...add in some more sugar and yeast and turn it into a hard lemonade? All recipes online call for frozen lemonade concentrate which I don't think we have in ireland? I wouldn't mind making a nice boozy strawberry lemonade :P

Khannie

Nothing preventing you doing it alright. I'd put money on getting a much nicer end result if you just used a few squeezed lemons and sugar, then back sweetened with some sweetener after it had all fermented. Nom nom nom.

If you do go with the cheapo lemonade, just make sure that it's made with sugar, not sweeteners, or you wont get much alcohol out of it (or you could just add your own sugar in).

Overall this sounds like a good idea though. Might give it a lash myself. I remember someone on here saying they were doing similar with Vimto.

Degsy

I made it before...Red Lemonade and White lemonade mixed together. The one i used contained sweetners so i wouldnt have to backsweeten afterwards.

For the yeast to work i added a bag of sugar per 5 litres.

It looked okay but it tasted pretty rank..all i couold taste was flat lemonade with a plasticy aftertaste.

Khannie

Did you carbonate it at all? Flat lemonade would be fairly rank alright. Wonder would it always retain that flat taste.

rubadub

I did it with a 3L country spring many years ago. Adding sugar to fizzy drinks will cause them to fizz up hugely, think about those mentos youtube clips. YOu can shake the hell out of the bottle over a few days to get rid of the fizz.

I saw a guy adding load of baking soda to coke to brew it, to neutralise the acid a bit, thinking it would kill the yeast. But my one seemed to brew ok, normal lemonades would be citric acid. It did not taste great, was not the worst though, that country spring stuff is vile anyway, I think it was leftover from some party where nobody drank it. Mine was very fizzy, I think I decanted it into 2 other 2L bottles, and then back into the rinsed out 3L and capped. I had added some wine nutrients to it.

It would be a good way to get use out of old 2L bottles all the same. I often end up pouring the ends of 2L's down the drain once they go flat, so you could save them up, if you were worried about it going off you could freeze it, and keep topping it up with dead 2L bottles until its got enough to brew. The freezing should also get rid of most of the fizz so adding sugar is no bother.

I think there was a lemonade alcopop type kit out years ago.

sharingan

How many lemons do you need to make a basic lemonade? It seems that fermenting a regular soft drink could be a load of hassle. Much easier (and better results) to do it all from basic ingredients.

Now if you blend up some fruit (and strain) or mix up some fruit juice ... now you are talking. Use sweeteners to keep it sweet (to taste) and cap them when you want them carbonated fully.