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Hard Lemonade Priming
As an experiement I have two seperate one gallon batches of hard lemonade in the basement in a secondary container. I did one batch with plain white sugar and one with sugar in the raw. Initial tastes present a bitter lemon taste, duh right? I need to sweeten it up...a lot.
I am curious to see how others would prime this lemonade.
How did you make your hard lemonade? Was it fermented or did you add liquor?
Fermented
Do you really want to prime? Priming would result in carbonation and complete fermentation of the priming sugar, resulting in no sweetness.
If you want to sweeten it up, I would add a non-fermentable sugar like lactose. Experiment with a 1/3 of a cup of it in one gallon of water. If it seems sweet enough do the same thing in the lemonade. Taste and readjust.
You can then add some PRIMING sugar if you want to get some carbonation.
Cool, I will give that a shot.
Let us now how it comes out.
Brewchez-
Do you think the lactose would work on hard cider?
I'm starting to think that the only way to get a sweet, carbonated hard cider is to force carbonate.
Lactose should work to sweeten anything you don't want to have fermented out. The problem with lactose is that it is not as sweet at say glucose or fructose. And lactose has its own mouthfeel issues that isn't as dry like you are used to with conventional brewing sugars. But in small quantities it should work.
If you wanted to have a sweetened cider without lactose, you'd have to somehow stop fermentation.
I think there is an additive that wine makers use that will stop yeast activity.
Essentially, creating an under attenuated cider. That way it wouldn't continue to ferment.
I don't really know. I am just applying what I know about fermentation and lactose to this problem.
If anybody knows what the wine makers use, I would love to know. I'm planning a cider batch but want it a little sweet so being able to stop fermentation would be handy.
drood wrote:
If anybody knows what the wine makers use, I would love to know. I'm planning a cider batch but want it a little sweet so being able to stop fermentation would be handy.
Potassium sorbate or sodium bisulfite.
I just did a little google. Felt bad for suggesting something without, actually having an answer.
Check it out here:
http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-stop … ation.html
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