Fizzy Lemonade

By dvdcrn

2.5 liters of fizzy lemonade from 6 lemons, between 2/3 and 1 cup of sugar and a 2 liter bottle of seltzer.

Ingredients

• Enough for 2.5 liters, 10 servings:
• 275 ml lemon juice, (about 1-1/8 cup, 6 lemons)
• 225 ml simple syrup (about 1 cup)
• 2 liter bottle of seltzer
• Optional:
• Some fresh mint sprigs
• A few drops of vanilla extract

Details

Servings 10
Preparation time 20mins
Cooking time 25mins

Preparation

Step 1

*Prepare simple syrup:*
Make about 1 cup of simple syrup by dissolving sugar in water. (For your first batch of lemonade, try 1-1/2 cups sugar for 1 cup water. Adjust the sweetness by using more or less sugar. I just use 1 cup of sugar, because I don't like sweet lemonade.)

Add the sugar to the water, put it over low heat and stir until it dissolves. Remove from heat to cool.

*Squeeze the lemons:*
Squeeze the lemons and strain out seeds and pulp. You want 275 ml, which is about 1-1/8 cup of lemon juice. I use a ball jar with ml markings, so it is easy to squeeze lemons until I get 275 ml.

*Combine as lemonade concentrate:*
Pour 225 ml of simple syrup into your lemon juice. Since I'm adding to the ball jar that already has 275 ml of lemon juice, I add simple syrup to a total volume of 500 ml (about 2-1/8 cups).

*To adjust the sweetness:*
If you want sweeter lemonade, use more sugar when you make your simple syrup: anywhere between 1 and 2-1/2 cups of sugar will dissolve in 1 cup of water. With whatever strength simple syrup, you should still add 225 ml to your 275 ml of lemon juice.

*Optional ingredients:*
(1) You could soak some mint leaves in the lemonade concentrate for about 20 minutes, then strain. About 1/4 cup of loose mint leaves would be nice.

(2) You could add a drop of vanilla extract per lemon. Some people will not like this, though. Be careful: don't use more than 1/16 of a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

*Keep lemon syrup refrigerated:*
Pour the lemon syrup into a jar, straining out any mint leaves or stray lemon seeds. The syrup will keep for weeks. Dilute with seltzer and server over ice.

*By the glass:*
Combine 4 parts seltzer with 1 part lemon syrup for 11% lemon juice. You can mix it stronger, down to 3 parts seltzer, which is 13.75% lemon juice. You probably don't want it any stronger than that.

*Two liter bottle:*
Pour 400 ml of seltzer (about 1-3/4 cups) from a 2-liter bottle and set aside. SLOWLY pour 400 ml of the lemon syrup through a funnel. Very slowly or you'll make a mess.

You will have another 100 ml of lemon syrup, which you can add to the 400 ml of seltzer you had removed from the bottle. This is your first 2 servings!

*Notes on recipe:*

(1) You should probably use seltzer instead of club soda, which contains salt and is more like fizzy mineral water.

(2) With my ratios, your lemonade will contain 11% lemon juice, about what is in good commercial natural lemonade. A 250 ml serving will have 55 calories and 14.4 gm carbs (12.8 gm sugar). Lots of vitamin C.

(3) Lemonade with sweeter simple syrup is perfectly acceptable. With these instructions, the lemonade should have somewhere between 12.8 and 20.1 grams of sugar in a 250 ml serving, and you'll still have 11% lemon juice.

(4) Some people like the product called "Simply Lemonade," although I find it cloyingly sweet. It has 29.4 grams of sugar in a 250 ml serving. I doubt that you could dissolve an additional 1/2 cup of sugar in the 2-1/8 cups of lemonade concentrate unless you boiled the lemon juice. Therefore, if you want to recreate "Simply Lemonade", make the strongest possible simple syrup (a 2.5-to-1 ratio of sugar-to-water), squeeze 290 ml of lemon juice (you may need 7 lemons), and add about 340 ml of your simple syrup. This will make a total of 630 ml of extra sweet lemonade concentrate. Take a 2-liter bottle of seltzer and replace 480 ml with the concentrate. Combine the remaining 150 ml of concentrate with the 480 ml of seltzer.