Homemade Cultured Lemonade

Homemade, naturally fermented lemonade is so easy to make. It involves less than five minutes of time in your kitchen, mostly spent stirring before bottling and waiting for friendly bacteria to do the work for you. You are then left with a beautiful, lightly sweet, bursting with bubbles, naturally fermented soda full with probiotics.

How do you get your Homemade Cultured Lemonade naturally fizzy?

Kefir! The fizz of your homemade cultured lemonade will depend on the action of friendly bacteria that you add to it. The bacteria will gobble up the carbohydrates in the honey which will lead to,  your natural sodas less sweet, slightly more tart, and naturally fizzy.

The natural fizz comes from the release carbon dioxide that happens during fermentation.  When carbon dioxide is bottled up with no place to go in flip-top bottles, the lemonade becomes naturally fizzy. You can learn all about making your own Kefir in this video tutorial from the Fermentation Queen, Felicity.

Homemade Cultured Lemonade Recipe

This naturally fermented lemonade soda is loaded with probiotics that give it its fizz and foam. A dryer soda, the lemonade is only slightly sweet from honey with lemon. Serve it over ice, garnished with fresh lemon slices.

Ingredients

• 6 cups water
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 cup fresh lemon juice (approx. 6-8 lemons)
• ½ - 1 cup kefir

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

• Glass Bottles

Method

1. Juice your lemons using a juicer or squeeze juice to make about 1 cup of lemon juice.
2. Warm the water in a saucepan over low heat, keeping it just warm enough to dissolve the honey. Whisk in the honey continuously until fully dissolved. Turn off the heat, and remove the pot from the stove.
3. Whisk the lemon juice and kefir into the honey water.
4. Pour the lemonade through a funnel into three glass bottles. Seal the bottles,
5. Allow the lemonade to sit at room temperature to ferment at least 24 hours or up to 7 days. You can open a bottle to check for fizziness and flavor, keeping in mind that the warmer your kitchen and the more time you allow, the sourer and more fizzy your soda will be.

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