Anybody ever try this with less lemon juice? I'm on my 2nd batch and thought the first one was just a bit to tart. I haven't added the third bottle yet.
Yes. I made a watermelon batch and only used 2 bottles of lemon juice instead of 3, becasue i was concerned the lemon would odrown out the delicate watermelon flavor. The reduced lemon really made a difference, but I'd have to say it really wasn't my favorite batch. The conclusion i came to is that the lemon juice kinda hides the alcohol bite and other young-wine flavors. For straight lemon pee, reducing the Lemon would not be good idea IMO.
However, after over a dozen batches of pee of various flavors, I've found that I can get other fruit flavors to come through just fine with the normal amt of lemon. And a solution for it being "too tart" might be to add some other fruit flavors to balance out the lemony tartness. Strawberries work well.
Heres how:
2-3 days before making invert syrup w lemon juice. Make a starter in a 1/2 gallon jug (100% juice any type), pour yourself a glass of juice to drink, then add: 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp Nutrient. EC-1118. Shake like crazy, put a balloon on plastic jug (after 5 days dump in and affix lid)
1-2 lbs frozen then thawed fruit in muslin bag in primary
Backsweeten with whatever juice, packets, etc you want as well as sugar.
Between the 1/2 gallon of juice starter & the primary fruit, you will be AMAZED how much flavor comes through just backsweetening with sugar.
One previous poster said his lady liked to add raspberry lemonaide packets to the pee to further sweeten it. To get this right out of the bottle, Just backsweeten it with those same packets + sugar to taste, and let your lady be the assistant taste tester. Some ppl even use Kool-aid packets. Once the yeast is sorbated+Kmeta'd, fermentation stops, so preservatives in Kool-aid , frozen daiquiri mix, etc arent gonna hurt anything.