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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
I'm thinking that it shuts down the fermentation by killing the yeast.
So to get a sparkling & sweet cider you would have to let the cider ferment all the way, add the lactose and priming sugar to the bottling bucket, then bottle.
Or if you are kegging, you could use the sodium stuff, add any kind of suger, even more apple cider to increase the apple taste, and force carbonate.
i experienced this very dilemma about a month ago. i bottled a cider i wanted to carbonate, but needed to sweeten it as well.
i only bottle, i do not have a kegging set up. so the use of potassium sorbate was out of the question; if i stop the yeast from working, there is no way for me to carbonate the bastard. i primed it with the raw cider, and added a bit more than was necessary.
by controlling the amount of headspace in the bottles, i am hoping that the yeast will ferment some of the sugars, giving me carbonation, but be inhibited (by overpressure) from fermenting all of the sugars. thus giving me a sweetened cider.
we shall see. this is all still theory, as i have not tasted one yet.
Very interested in your results. I really like, and so does the lady, hard cider.
Have not made what I really want yet. And, the damn stuff is $7 a six pack.
I can get late season, 1.050+ SG, cider in bulk for $2/gal. Really would like to come up with a way to enjoy it.
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