Yellow (a.k.a. Skeeter Pee, or Lemonade Wine)
Ingredients for a 5 gallon batch:
3 bottles of 32oz 100% lemon juice
7 lbs sugar
3/4 tsp tannin
8 tsp. yeast nutrient
Approx. 4.75 gallons water
EC-1118 yeast
Potassium metabisulphite
Potassium sorbate
Super-Kleer
Create an invert sugar mixture of your sugar, 8 cups of water and 1/3 cup of lemon juice. First, heat the water/lemon juice to the boiling point, then start dissolving your sugar while stirring. After the sugar is dissolved, keep at that temperature for 30 minutes. Pour the mixture into your primary fermentation bucket along with 2 of the 3 bottles of the lemon juice (the third bottle we'll save for later). Add water until the volume reaches about 5.5 gallons. Add the tannin, and 4 tsp of yeast nutrient. Stir the must.
Test your Specific Gravity with a hydrometer, it should be around 1.07 which will yield a wine of about 10% alcohol by volume. Stir the mixture vigorously to introduce oxygen into the must and purge the lemon juice of preservatives. Cover the bucket and let it sit until it reaches room temperature.
Spread your EC-1118 yeast over the surface of your must. It may take a couple of days for you to have an active fermentation. Check the Specific Gravity every day, and while it is above 1.05, stir the must vigorously a day to introduce oxygen. After it reaches 1.05, add the other 4 tsp. of yeast nutrient and the last bottle of lemon juice, and stir the must. Adding the last bottle of the lemon juice this late in the fermentation helps the yeast deal with the acidity of this wine.
After the Specific Gravity reaches 1.00 or lower, rack into a clean, sanitized carboy. Allow the wine to ferment completely dry, then rack the wine off the lees into another carboy. Stir the wine in the carboy to release the carbon dioxide, then add a 1/4 tsp of Potassium metabisulphite, and 2.5 tsp of Potassium Sorbate, and Super-Kleer. After a week, the wine should be clear, rack it into a clean, sanitized carboy.
Here's where we sweeten the wine to make it taste like lemonade. I didn't include the additional sugar in the ingredients, because everyone likes it at different levels. Add sugar to the wine, stirring it in until it dissolves, and then taste it. (I usually add 2 cups of sugar, others have gone up to 6, it all depends on how sweet you like it). Once you got it where you you like it, put the airlock back in and wait a couple of weeks to make sure that fermentation doesn't start back up.
Bottle the wine, and enjoy! I usually refrigerate it, and drink it cold, but you can pour it over ice. Another thing I like to do is add a slice of lemon to the glass.
