Brew Number

35

Style

Alcoholic Bitter Lemon BL 8/10

Ingredients

24 lemons, 50% wild (like a cross between orange and lemon), 50% proper lemons

3 kg Bundaberg sugar

1 sachet ale yeast from supermarket

Brewing notes

Put 4 L water in pot and heat.  Roughly chop 24 lemons and throw in pot.  Keep prodding and mashing and bring to boil (took about 30 mins).  Add 3 kg sugar, stir until dissolved.  Boil about 15 mins until lemon flesh has pulped, peel is soft, and can taste peel in the wort.  Put strainer over fermenter and pour in, stopping to mash lemons in strainer and remove.  Top up to 21.5 L with cold water and ice.  Rehydrate yeast in tepid water and sugar.  Pitch yeast on 24 September, wort temp 26 degrees. OG 1.052.

Yeast didn’t start.  Start a yeast in sugar and water, once bubbling pitch.  Didn’t start. 

25 September Check pH – about 3, whereas yeast likes about 4.5.  Start a yeast in sugar and water, once bubbling add 2 tablespoons lemonade.  Bubbling stops, wait till bubbling comes back, add half a cup of lemonade.  Wait 30 mins till bubbling active again, add a cup of lemonade.  After 1 hr, bubbling again.  Pitch into fermenter.  Fermentation started rapidly, then slowed to nothing for a few hours, then finally started again.

1 October SG 1.020, still going, lost a lot of sweetness in the taste.  6 Oct SG 1.002, bubbling slowly.  7 Oct bubbling stopped.  Tasted of alcohol and bitter lemon, no sweetness left, not very nice. 8 Oct, added 0.5 kg lactose dissolved in boiling water and 200 Splendour artificial sweetener tabs.  Better flavour, slightly sweet, still a lot of bitterness from the lemon and some ginger or ale taste from the yeast/alcohol.  Decanted, bulk primed with 7 oz cane sugar, bottled.

Tasting notes

First attempt at alcoholic lemonade.  ABV about 7%.

12 Oct – slight hiss on opening but very little carbonation, which makes it taste flat and stale.  Could just be too young, or may not be gassing up in the bottle.

18 Oct – Paul says moderate gas, nice sweet flavour, cloudy, OK lemonade, slight ale taste.

20 Oct – Gas much improved, hiss on opening, gentle bubbling in glass, not yet schweppervescence.  Refreshingly tart, with bitter lemon bite more on the nose than in the mouth, lasting lemon aftertaste, slight yeasty/gingery flavour.  Tastes pretty good, like an alcopop.

21 Nov – Lost most of the aley taste, now just a slight ginger beery flavour with the up front sweetness and lingering lemony bitterness.  Comes out of the bottle a bit, but gentle bubbling in the glass.  Flavour much improved and very nice.  Definitely the better of the two lemonades to date.

6 Jan – ginger and yeast on the nose, lively bubbling in the glass.  Slightly cloudy.  Refreshingly bitter, with just enough sweetness, slight aftertaste from the sweetener.  Gets you pretty drunk.

18 Feb – as above, only slightly cloudy.  Initially very gassy, but dissipates pretty quickly.  Good bitter flavour, but detectable artificial sweetener aftertaste, seems to get better the more you drink, but then it is 7%.

11 May, 7 months old. Close to clear, slight lemony yellow colour. Good level of carbonation, schweppervescence in fact. Slight aley aroma. Pretty good lemonade, bitter lemon peel flavour, just sweet enough, artificial sweetener aftertaste almost hidden by the warming alcohol aftertaste

28 October. About the same, higly gassed and spritzy, lemon flavour maybe has mellowed a bit which makes teh artificial sweetener a bit more obvious.