Hard Lemonade - Easy Brew Day

All you need to make hard lemonade.

My friend is currently on a Mike's Hard Lemonade kick.  It's a little concerning how much he likes them. I figure it would be a bit more tolerable if he was drinking home brewed hard lemonade. So, as a thank you for making the wine in my wooden barrel that will soon be aging Flanders Red Ale and for 2lbs of FREE raspberries from his backyard (those berries are expensive fresh!) – I figured I could make him a case of Hard Lemonade.

I've never made it before and thought it would be really easy.  But, after reading up on the brewing blogs, it seems it can be somewhat difficult due to the acidity in all of the lemonade you need to use.  The yeast can get stressed out from the acidity an leave some nasty off-flavors or the must (juice) will just take a very long time to ferment out the sugars since the yeast is struggling in that highly acidic environment.

I decided to go for it and brew a straight lemonade with no additional fruit juice or fresh fruit added for additional flavoring.  Here is the recipe I ended up with:

1.25 lbs Extra Light DME
1.25 lbs Cane Sugar
4.5 oz Malto Dextrine
4 jars of frozen Lemonade - no preservatives

Putt all of your ingredients into a 1.5 gallon of boiling water and boil for 15 minutes.
Cool the wort down to about 100 degrees and then add to your primary bucket with another gallon of cold water.  Top off to three gallons as needed.    Measure the gravity.  You need to make sure that your gravity is within the range of the yeast you plan to use.  This recipe with the lemonade I used came in at 1.064.  This will come in at least 7% and probably even higher once it's finished.

I used regular dry ale yeast - Safale US-05. I did not want it to ferment all the way out so I decided against the Champagne yeast.  I also added yeast energizer at 1tsp per gallon of lemonade.  This is to help the yeast battle through the acidity.

After about 18 hours the airlock was firing away and it went strong for about 4 days.  I will be moving it to a secondary for a quick rest before bottling.  More to come once I have the final gravity and it's in the bottle.

Bottle Day: Dark Belgian Strong Ale

It has been almost three months since I brewed this Dark Belgian Strong Ale.  The recipe is based on a clone recipe I saw for Chimay Blue. I hope the extra time in the secondary helped mesh together all of the complex flavors. 

The smell was awesome going into the bottle so I can only hope it tastes just as good as it smells.  It finished out a bit drier than expected and fermented down below 1.010 and finished around 1.007.  It bumped the expected ABV from 9% up to 10%.

The thread that contained the recipe on Homebrew Talk stated that this was a pretty excellent beer after one month in the secondary and two weeks in the bottle.  With that in mind I will taste this at the two week mark in the bottle - especially since it sat for 3 months in the secondary.

I will follow up in two weeks.

Tasting Day: Sour Golden Pale Ale

The first beer is ready from my three batches of Sour Pale Ale made from a Belgian Blonde/Golden ale recipe was ready to drink last week.  This was a pretty basic recipe that where Pilsner, Wheat and Aromatic malt made of up grain bill.  The mash was then inoculated with some a home grown lactic culture to sit for 2 days and then boiled as normal.  This particular batch was fermented with a Belgian Wheat strain.

ABV = 7.0%
IBU = 18
SRM = 4

Appearance: Nailed it.  Nice golden color.  Bright yellow where the light slips through with a deeper orange color on the edges.

Smell: Smells like the lactic bacteria starter and nothing else.  No fruity or lemon smells.  Just the funky lactic sourness.

Mouthfeel: Good carbonation on this one but the mouthfeel is still a bit weak and thin.

Taste: Fail. This one tastes exactly as it smells.  Nothing but the lactic funkiness from the starter.  Since the grain bill is so basic there is nothing else in the grain bill to complement the lactic funkiness.  My original thought was the lemon tartness from the Wyeast Belgian Wheat strain would compliment the lactic sour from the bacteria but I am barely able to get the lemon flavor.  I knew that without the addition of some specialty grains that this beer was going to rely heavily on the lactic sour starter and the yeast.  The yeast in this case was just not strong enough to overcome the lactic starter.

I have better hopes for the remaining two batches - which will actually turn into four batches.  The remaining batches are fermented with Brett and some are fermented with Brett, Pedio and Lactic cultures.  Here is the remaining beer to try from this batch.

1. 100% Brett Lambic Yeast - 1 gallon
2. Roeselare Yeast - 1 gallon
3. Roeselare Yeast with Raisins - 1/2 gallon
4. Roeselare Yeast with Raspberries - 1/2 gallon

My hope is the stronger yeast flavors from the Brett Lambic and the Roeselare will help pull this beer back from the dumps.  I also think the beer I tried here with the Belgian Wheat yeast could of been something if I added fruit to the secondary.  It just seemed to be super one dimensional.  I learned from the Flanders Red "Funk with Less Fuss" experiment that it is easy for these to taste one dimensional so you need to add some extra ingredients to help balance that lactic sourness created from the starter.

Till next time.