Summer Lemon Shandy Questions

Hey everyone,

Quick question about a summer shandy-style I am brewing today. The recipe, borrowed from wjbunton, is:

8 oz. Carapils - steep
8 oz. Crystal 10L - steep
3 lbs. Light DME
3 lbs. Extra light DME - late addition

Hops:
0.36 oz. Amarillo 60 min
0.3 oz Citra 30 min
0.5 oz Ahtanum 5 min

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056

5.5 Gallon batch

My question, I would like to add lemon flavor to this, and have seen a few shandy recipes which call for unsweetened lemon kool-aid added to bottling sugar when bottled. Thoughts about that?

Also, when using Irish moss, I usually add 1 teaspoon at last 15 minutes of the boil. Does adding more mean more clarification? Is it possible to add too much?

I read that you can add too much irish moss. So just follow the directions & you'll be fine. Some do use unsweetened lemonaid in their shandies. Though I'm not sure adding it in priming solution is safe with kool-aid style mixes. I used Realemon juice crystals. But unsweetened lemonaid with lemon zest might be better.

I used 1oz of dryed lemon peel in 1/4 cup vodka soaked for 3-4 days in a batch and it was way too bitter. And not a ton of lemon flavor. So don't it the way i did.

You only want to use the colored part known as Zest. The white pith is exceedingly bitter.

it was dried from Brewers Best. i don't think it was an issue with there product, more like an issue with something i did. i will try it again but i won't add the vodka and only dry hop with 1/2 oz

It's going to depend on how sweet you want your shandy to be out of the bottle. Shandies are, as i'm sure you know, kind of like an arnold palmer... a blend of light beer and lemonaid. If you want it to be slightly sweet out of the bottle, you're going to need some more unfermentable sugars in there to backsweeten it. You can also use splenda or another artificial sweetener to sweeten it up.

If it were me, i'd use meyer lemon juice (fresh squeezed) mixed with splenda. I'd probably do a taste testing to get the right ratio of lemonaid to beer before you bottle it. This is easy to do using a simple six pack of light beer (12 ounce each) and just measuring how much lemonaid you add to each one to get the right flavor you're looking for (in mililiters) for each 12 ounce pour, and then scaling that to the batch size you're bottling and adding the upscaled amount to the bottling bucket.

guess i should have read the instructions:

"Lemon is becoming very popular in beers made for the warmer months. Add lemon flavor to your Belgian-style brews, wheat beers, and specialty beers. Use 1/4 - 1/2 oz during the last 0 to 10 minutes of the boil."

Ive used simply limeade with a lemon-lime wheat... added after primary fermentation stopped. Gave it a good flavor.

Like aiptasia said, its usually a blend so u might wanna try that instead of lemon rind as its shandys are normally sweeter, and the rind will give the flavor but not much sweetness.