Lemonade in beer

General Homebrew Discussion
1

I brewed ten gallons of a wheat beer on Saturday and due to some transfer issues I wound up with about 6 gallons in one carboy and only 4 in the other so I thought this might allow for a little experiment and add a gallon of lemonade to the short carboy after primary.

I am using the weizen strain yeast but I am fermenting at about 62 so hopefully won’t have a lot of the banana esters.

Anyone ever tried this?  Any ideas how the lemonade will impart flavors and probably another kick in fermentation due to the white sugar?

2

I’ve never used lemon-ade. I did use real lemons in a wheat beer a long time ago; looking for a summer thirst qiuncher. I went way over board on the lemons and it was sour. It mellowed out after a time and was drinkable, but man did the lemons come through.

Having said all that, I was watching a Leiny commercial last nght and they say they use lemon-ade in their Summer Shandy. I have no idea how much they use and I haven’t tried their Shandy, but it appears to be a ommercially viable way to get lemon into beer.

Good luck. I, for one, would be interested to know how 1 gal into 4 gal works.

3

If you’ve ever had Radlers in the beer tents around Munich… they’re really good!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radler
I use some carbonated lemonade w/ any suitable lager or ale.

4

Yeah a Radler is kinda what I was going for but not sure how it will turn out.  I may need to play with the ratios.

5

My last brew I did a wheat with cascade and centennial. I really wanted to impart some more citrus flavor to the beer so I ended up cold brewing my priming sugar in a mason jar with the juice from 2 lemons, 1 orange and as much zest as I could get from each. I just made it at the same time as I brewed and then let it sit in the fridge for 2 weeks. I got antsy and popped the first one a couple days ago after letting them carb for a week. Tastes great, though obviously undercarbed. A lot of citrus flavor and it’s full bodied so it’s not too dry. It doesn’t have the tartness of lemonade but  I think you could get to where you wanted if you did the same thing I did with a lot more lemon and added to the fermenter as primary was winding down or when bottling

6

If you want full on radler experience you’ll want to stop the fermentation after primary. You could use potassium sorbate and transfer the beer to secondary. Wait a few days at chilly temps and then add your lemonage.

7

Thanks Drew!  I will try that.  I wasn’t sure about the added sugar in the lemonade and how that would effect the final product.

8

What the Germans call lemonade is often a soft drink like 7-Up or Sprite. Some radlers are made with those.

9

I just learned today that the slang name for a beer and Sprite (technically Limo, which I guess can be lemonade or soda like Sprite) is a “Russisch,” and the slang name for a Cola and Weizen is a very inappropriate thing to call black people that I won’t repeat here.

10

I’m pretty open to experimentation, but cola and weizen sounds pretty nasty (says the guy who is attempting to brew a batch of hard Pepsi as we speak…)

11

AFAIK they typically use dunkelweizen, which I can see, more than a typical hefeweizen.

12

Sounds like a Shandy to me!! Leinenkugel Summer Shandy is a Lemonade Beer mix, its amazing! Hope it turn out good for ya! I have been wanting to do exactly what your doing!!

13

I’ll let you guys know how it turns out.  The true test will be my brew club, but I’m pretty sure they will hate it.  Probably call it a “panty dropper” beer.  ::slight_smile:

14

True story: I knew a guy that used that phrase a lot. He got indicted on Federal drug charges. It’s definitely something “winners” say all the time.

15

one of my favorite summer drinks is glass full of ice, half full of carbonated lemonade and half of 312.

16

IME drinking these concoctions in Germany, is that they are mixed on the spot - not fermented with soda or lemonade.  i was slipped one of these by accident in munich - took a huge gulp of what i thought was going to be beer, and coughed it up when the sweet taste hit me. I thought it was a joke but quickly learned about the radler…cant say i every grew to like this brewfoolery :o

17

This thread has me thinking of an idea I had a while back that I wanted to try. I was thinking of trying to brew a hard lemonade using DME as my sweetener. By using a yeast that doesn’t attenuate very well (like a wine yeast) you could keep it from drying out completely but still be able to bottle prime. I’m curious how much lemonade character makes it into the finished beer at this ratio of lemonade to beer.

18

Do you think you’d get a low pH from the lemonade that would adversely affect the yeast?

19

Probably not. I’ve used wine yeasts to ferment pre-soured wort to make sour beers without issue. Wine yeast is pretty hardy.

I should add, I’ve made 100% fermented grapefruit juice, and it was pretty undrinkable by itself, so I wouldn’t ferment 100% lemon juice. Diluted in the ~50% range the fermented grapefruit juice was pretty good.

20

That is an interesting idea.

I’m anxious to see how much comes through as well.  I like to do this every once in a while since I started brewing 10 gallon batches.  Keep one carboy true to the recipe and then experiment a little with the other.