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Hard Lemon Iced Tea

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Sweet lemon tea fermented with brewer's yeast. Quick, cheap, and a good first brew in a glass carboy.

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Starting gravity1.038–1.040
Finishing gravity0.998–1.000
Strength~5% ABV
Time in the carboy4–14 days

Batch size

Leave some headspace in your fermenter for the foam. Quantities below update to match.

Ingredients

  • Water: in total
  • Black tea: or loose. Plain Lipton or Bushells is fine.
  • Dextrose: . Plain white sugar also works. You can swap up to a third of it for honey for more character.
  • Lemons: , juice and zest. Zest only, no white pith, or it goes bitter.
  • Yeast nutrient (Fermaid-O or DAP): .
  • Yeast: . Pick one:
    • Kveik Voss (recommended for Brisbane): happy at 25–35 °C, done in 3–5 days, with a slight orange note that suits tea.
    • US-05: very clean, but needs 18–22 °C.
    • EC-1118 (champagne yeast): bulletproof, finishes very dry.
Don't skip the nutrient Sugar and tea have almost no nitrogen. Without nutrient the yeast stalls and the brew smells of rotten egg.

Method

  1. Sanitise everything: carboy, funnel, airlock, spoon. Star San is easiest.
  2. Make the tea. Bring of water to about 90 °C. Steep the tea for 4–5 minutes only, then pull it out. Over-steeping gives harsh tannins, and fermenting makes them stand out more.
  3. Add the rest. Stir in the dextrose until it dissolves, then add the lemon juice and zest.
  4. Cool it before it touches the glass. Cool the pot in a sink of ice water, then funnel it into the carboy and top up with cold water to .
  5. Check the temperature: under 25 °C for US-05, or up to about 35 °C for Kveik.
  6. Take a gravity reading with your hydrometer. You're aiming for about 1.038–1.040. Write it in the brew log below.
  7. Pitch the yeast with half the nutrient. Add the other half on day 2, dissolved in a little water. Add it slowly because it'll fizz up.
  8. Fit the airlock, or a blow-off tube for Kveik because it's vigorous. Keep the carboy out of the light.
  9. Wait until it's finished: when the gravity reads the same three days running (about 0.998–1.000), it's done. That's 4–6 days with Kveik or 10–14 with US-05.
  10. Rack it off the sediment into a clean vessel. If you can, chill it in the fridge for a couple of days so it clears.
Glass carboy safety Hot liquid poured into a cold carboy can crack it. Full carboys are heavy and slippery when wet: use a carboy handle or a milk crate, and never lift one by the neck.

Finishing

It finishes bone dry, which tastes thin and a bit sour. To get it sweet and iced-tea-like, pick one:

Keg it (easiest)

Stabilise with potassium sorbate plus Campden tablets (metabisulphite), back-sweeten with sugar syrup to taste, then force-carbonate.

Bottle it fizzy and sweet

Prime with sugar as normal for carbonation, and sweeten with something yeast can't ferment, like erythritol or stevia.

Bottle bombs Don't sweeten with ordinary sugar in sealed bottles without stabilising first. The yeast keeps going and the bottles can over-pressurise and burst.

Still and sweet

Stabilise, back-sweeten with sugar, and bottle flat. Serve over ice with a lemon wedge.

Variations for later batches

  • Peach: put about of peaches (or tinned peaches in juice) into the secondary for 5 days.
  • Green tea and ginger.
  • Earl Grey with the lemon.
  • Kombucha is the other road. It's fermented with a SCOBY rather than brewer's yeast, so it's mostly sour and only about 0.5–2% alcohol. It's a different product altogether.

Brew log

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ABV
–

ABV = (OG − FG) × 131.25.

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