....make hard lemonade!
'Hard' (ie alcoholic) lemonade, something that's more popular in the US than over here*. The leading brand in the US is coincidentally "Mike's hard lemonade", and is generally considered to be a disgusting alco-pop style drink where flavours & sugars are added to cleanly fermented alcohol to give a children-friendly beverage. I was after something a little different.
First off take your lemons - I got 3kg for $6 - and give them a soak to clean the skins and peel the labels off
Next chop them into small chunks. This is like writing beer labels - it doesn't seem like a big job when you decide to do it but the hand cramps aren't long in catching up with you.
Throw the chopped lemon and a few inches of chopped ginger into a pan of boiling water for 45 minutes or so. The whole flat will smell of lemons and you will have a craving for pancakes.
After 45 mins or so, boil up a kettles worth of water. Take the pan off the heat and chuck in the fermentables
Here I'm using 2kg of dextrose, 1/2 kg of wheat malt extract and a pack of 'dry body' brewing sugar (600g dextrose, 400g maltodextrin). Sugar would probably work just was well but I was trying to keep it light with the wheat malt adding a touch of head and protein haze.
Bring the wort back to the boil, chuck in around 30g of Saaz hops and remove from the heat. The hops were an experiment on my part - I'm hoping they'll add a spicy note to the nose but not affect the flavour to much.
After that it's just regular brewing. Cool the wort & mix with cold water in the fermentor, add the yeast and agitate. I asked for champagne yeast at the homebrew shop (it's supposed to handle the high acidity better) but got given a hand labelled ziplock bag of 'All Purpose Wine Yeast' so decided to go with S-04 ale yeast instead. If it doesn't take off I can always re-pitch with something more appropriate.
I ended up with 24l of wort with a starting gravity of around 1.050, which if this ferments to dry will give me something with a strength of around 5.5%. As long as it gets active in the next few days I'll just leave it for a couple of weeks and then bottle it straight away. It should be ready in time for the lead up to Christmas.
*Edit - I've been reliably informed (and mildly reprimanded) via the comments section that the first commercial 'hard lemonade' was in fact an Aussie brew called Two Dogs, made by a brewer in 1993 who had been talking to a farmer with too many lemons to sell. Imitators like Hoopers Hooch and Mike's Hard Lemonade just picked up on the idea and rolled it out in different countries.
Just typing those names gives me mild flashbacks to distant dizzy decadent days, so I was obviously partial to it :)
'Hard' (ie alcoholic) lemonade, something that's more popular in the US than over here*. The leading brand in the US is coincidentally "Mike's hard lemonade", and is generally considered to be a disgusting alco-pop style drink where flavours & sugars are added to cleanly fermented alcohol to give a children-friendly beverage. I was after something a little different.
First off take your lemons - I got 3kg for $6 - and give them a soak to clean the skins and peel the labels off
Throw the chopped lemon and a few inches of chopped ginger into a pan of boiling water for 45 minutes or so. The whole flat will smell of lemons and you will have a craving for pancakes.
Bring the wort back to the boil, chuck in around 30g of Saaz hops and remove from the heat. The hops were an experiment on my part - I'm hoping they'll add a spicy note to the nose but not affect the flavour to much.
After that it's just regular brewing. Cool the wort & mix with cold water in the fermentor, add the yeast and agitate. I asked for champagne yeast at the homebrew shop (it's supposed to handle the high acidity better) but got given a hand labelled ziplock bag of 'All Purpose Wine Yeast' so decided to go with S-04 ale yeast instead. If it doesn't take off I can always re-pitch with something more appropriate.
I ended up with 24l of wort with a starting gravity of around 1.050, which if this ferments to dry will give me something with a strength of around 5.5%. As long as it gets active in the next few days I'll just leave it for a couple of weeks and then bottle it straight away. It should be ready in time for the lead up to Christmas.
*Edit - I've been reliably informed (and mildly reprimanded) via the comments section that the first commercial 'hard lemonade' was in fact an Aussie brew called Two Dogs, made by a brewer in 1993 who had been talking to a farmer with too many lemons to sell. Imitators like Hoopers Hooch and Mike's Hard Lemonade just picked up on the idea and rolled it out in different countries.
Just typing those names gives me mild flashbacks to distant dizzy decadent days, so I was obviously partial to it :)
Looking forward to this one. I used to love 2 dogs lemonade before it was bought out by one of the big breweries. Great on a hot day.
ReplyDeleteGordy
I'm glad you mentioned "Two Dogs" Gordy. I was going to provide a very brief history lesson on Australian hard lemonade to our English immigrant and mention this one but you've already done so.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Dogs
Looking forward to it too.....probably more so than the beetroot beer. :)
You know, I vaguely remember that from my backpacking days. Cheers for the link & the info - I'll update the post. Let's hope mine is as tasty :)
DeleteNo reprimand intended. :)
ReplyDelete