Hard Lemon Soda

Ah, so let’s use the MDX stuff for this one.

Background

My history with brewing is an odd one. My first introduction to it was my mother showing me how to make ginger beer when I was a kid. It was a very simple process, and the result was a very simple beverage. It was basically just ginger, sugar, water, and bread yeast. It tasted like petrol.

However, in my university days I realised I could brew tonnes of alcohol for cents on the rand. So I started messing around with beer kits, namely LME (Liquid Malt Extract). I bought some plastic buckets and bits and bobs like airlocks and bottle cappers etc. Immediately the 25L of beer got contaminated. No beer and 300 rand lighter.

After that I decided to hit the forums and do some reading on the fundamental concept of making beer. I read about ancient Mesopotamian brewing and the theorised origin of beer. There is some interesting theory of beer being a primary driver of sedentary life and agriculture. This I believe, because man, hard labour in the hot sun is 100x better with an ice-cold lager.

Anyway, I decided, in line with my research, I would head to first principles. I headed out to a horse feed shop and bought 50kg of barley.

Straightforward process on paper — I washed and germinated the barley. When the roots were about 1cm long, I dried the barley with a fan. Some bits got mouldy but such is life. The majority was fine and I then dried it further in a tumble dryer (which has the nice side effect of separating the dried roots from the grains).

Then I discovered the first major roadblock. I had no easy way to crush the grains. I tried a dumbbell weight and smashed it like that for a few hours. Decided that was a waste of my time.

I found an antique grain mill at an antique shop. Did a crap job but it worked.

Then I chucked the grains into a cloth bag and mashed it, boiled it, added hops and chucked it into the fermenter.

Long story short, it was the best beer I’d had in years. Hazy, amber, and fantastic.

Never again did I brew beer. But the key principles had solidified.

I also did some mead — turned into petrol. Wine turned into vinegar.

Anyway, so now here I am trying some wacky shit in the form of hard lemon soda, which is slightly dolled up Kilju or sugar wash basically.

The core idea is that I just like little bugs metabolising carbs and creating something else.

So this project came about from a YouTube video I stumbled across — a jolly looking British chap divulging a way to make dirt cheap and palatable alcohol.

I kind of wrote it off thinking it would taste like most sugar wines — shit. But my friend also watched the same video a week or so later and was telling me about it. I decided this would be a cool bonding experience to use my prior knowledge of brewing and apply it to the hard lemon soda project.

The first deliverable was basically a carbon copy of the recipe given by the British fellow:

1 litre of water
sugar
2 caps of lemon juice
yeast

I made some adjustments — I didn’t use his amount of sugar, I wanted it a little less strong, around 4.5% ABV, so I busted out the old hydrometer and did it manually.

I also didn’t opt for bread yeast; I had some pale ale yeast from years ago.

The outcome was a very crisp and delicious hard lemon soda that I couldn’t even wait to finish fermenting or cold crashing. I drank it straight from the bottle. Flat, room temp and very yeasty.

A success. Somehow the tang of the lemon juice made it so that the weird, off, semi-sweet yeast flavour was not disgusting.

So What’s Next?

I have a few ideas.

Summer refreshment for the trip to the lake

So with the POC (proof of concept) a success, I want to create some variations. I also want to actually fucking finish the process before guzzling it down.

There are 2 phases to this.

Phase 1 is to create a plain lemon soda, very carbonated and dry, but once more, less strong. In my age I’ve discovered the marvel of moderation. My aim is a 3.5 to 4% ABV and a very pronounced lemon flavour. The plan is to zest some lemons and then mash those into some dry sugar to hopefully extract the various oils inside the rind. Then to add a little extra lemon juice to make it extra crispy.

This will be the base stock for what’s to come. The variation of this will be to backsweeten with sucralose, which I can buy in bulk for pennies. I already buy 1000 sachets once a year for coffee. Easy. That variation is for those who don’t want something dry and tart like I do.

I’ll bottle those up in flip-top bottles because I dislike capping bottles and 2L soda bottles are not very classy.

Phase 2 is then to really shake things up — two deliverables here too.

I’d like to experiment with higher ABV varieties. An experiment with an 8–12% ABV version, with even more focus on the lemon zest extraction. This will maybe be a bit more of a sipping beverage, kind of like a white wine maybe.

I’d also love to try the very funny idea of “distilling” one of these premium-strength lemon sodas by freeze distilling it — to maybe crank it up to 20–30% ABV. I’m not fond of spirits so it’s more just for the fun of trying than actually making something I want to drink.

The second more interesting variation is to add some other flavours. I have a few ideas here. There are some basic ideas like ginger or mint which I think would be nice.

But the holy grail would be to buy those silly fruity little rooibos tea bags and pop them into the fermenter. I’ve heard they can be a way to add tannin and, more importantly, some very distinct and fancy flavours. Cranberry and orange would be very interesting. But those would be added to the base stock varieties.

So there’s a reason to stay tuned. We may get some really nice summer drinks out of this.