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Simple homemade lemon wine is like sipping summertime!
This simple recipe only requires a few ingredients, and if you harvest lemons in season during winter the finished lemon wine will be ready just in time for summer.
Citrus, especially lemon, finds its way into all manner of wine recipes. My homemade dandelion wine recipe has quite a bit of citrus added, meaning that it’s really more or less a citrus wine flavored with the floral aromatics of dandelion petals. Why not try skipping all that, and just make a pure, sweet and refreshing lemon wine?
How to Make Lemon Wine
Since this recipe includes whole lemons, both juice, and peel, I’d strongly suggest starting with organic lemons. A full gallon of lemon wine only requires about 8 to 10 lemons, and even at the fancy natural food store that only set me back about $7.
Not bad, given that the other ingredients are pretty inexpensive. In total, this homemade lemon wine will cost around $2.50 per bottle even with purchasing organic lemons. If you’ve got free backyard lemons, even better.
Start by slicing the lemons thin and placing them in a large saucepan with the sugar.
Add in either 1 lb of golden sultana raisins or about a quart of white grape juice. The yeasts need something to nourish them, and lemons aren’t exactly full of the correct nutrients to get the job done.
You need a sweet fruit to provide micronutrients for the little beasties, and raisins or grape juice are perfect. For this recipe, I suggest golden raisins or white grape juice so that it has less of an impact on the color of the finished wine.
Beyond the grape juice or raisins, the yeasts also need a little bit of yeast nutrient to carry them through to complete fermentation. Roughly 1 teaspoon of powdered yeast nutrient does the job nicely. I’ve also included 1 tsp of pectic enzyme to help the wine clear, but that’s optional and merely cosmetic.
I generally use premier blanc wine yeast in my homemade wines, and that’s a good choice for this lemon wine. Please, whatever you do, don’t add bread yeast. Yeast actually imparts quite a bit of flavor to wine, and bread yeast wines taste…well, like bread.
Just don’t do it. It’s only about $1 for a packet of yeast, and it’s well worth the investment. If you’re making more than one batch at a time, a single packet is enough for 5 gallons of wine (dissolved in water and then distributed evenly among the carboys).
I’m using a one-gallon wide-mouth fermenter for this batch because I want to leave the whole lemon slices in for the primary ferment. If you’re using a standard narrow neck carboy, filter them out before putting everything into a carboy or you’ll clog up the neck. In that case, juice and zest the lemons instead of slicing them, and discard the rinds.
You can also divide this recipe in half and make a half-gallon of lemon wine in a half-gallon mason jar with a silicone airlock kit. This recipe works fine with Meyer lemons as well, and the flavor of a Meyer lemon wine is a bit less acidic and slightly warmer to the palate.
Lemon Mead Recipe Variation
Since lemons aren’t exactly high in sugar, this recipe requires about 3 pounds of added sugar to allow the mixture to ferment. If you’d like to try a lemon mead instead, the recipe is the same…simply substitute 3 lbs of honey in place of the white sugar.
Keep in mind, honey is quite a bit less fermentable than white sugar and the wine will take a bit longer to brew. Mead also benefits from more time aging in the bottle, and I’d suggest bottle conditioning a lemon mead for at least 6 months (as opposed to 3 for a lemon wine).
A lemon mead would be pretty similar to this rhubarb mead, and you could actually just substitute lemons for rhubarb in the recipe. This particular recipe is a micro-batch mead recipe, which makes just one quart of mead. That might not be a bad idea if you’re trying something experimental.
Similarly, if you want to make just a single quart to see if lemon wine is really your thing, this recipe can be divided by 4 for a quart batch using this small-batch wine method.
I also came across a recipe for a traditional Finnish drink called Sima. It’s a carbonated lemon soda that’s naturally carbonated by letting it ferment with a tiny pinch of yeast for just a few days. They drink it to celebrate new years, which happens in late April in their traditional calendar.
Lemon Wine
Ingredients
- 8-10 lemons, thinly sliced
- 3 lbs sugar
- 1 lb sultana raisins, or 1-quart white grape juice
- 1 tsp yeast nutrient
- 1 tsp Pectic Enzyme
- 1 packet wine yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup water
- water to fill
Instructions
- In a large saucepan, bring water, lemons, sugar and raisins (or grape juice) to a boil. Turn off the heat and stir to dissolve the sugar. (If using a narrow neck fermenter, juice the zest the lemons instead of slicing, discarding the rind).
- Allow the mixture to cool before pouring everything (lemons included) into a primary fermentation vessel.
- Add the yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme and wine yeast. Stir to incorporate, and allow the mixture to ferment for 7 to 10 days.
- After primary fermentation, rack the wine into a secondary fermenter using a sterilized siphon. Ferment for about 6 - 8 weeks in secondary, until fermentation stops and the wine clears.
- Bottle the lemon wine in corked wine bottles, and allow the mixture to age for at least 3 months before drinking.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
More Homemade Wine Recipes
Hello, can I use a big pot covered with cheesecloth for primary fermentation? Thanks.
Yup! Many people choose to have an open container for the primary, and that works great. Just make sure you get it into something with a water lock for the secondary so the alcohol doesn’t convert to vinegar. Enjoy!
so I prepared the wine for primary fermentation but there was no bubbles in the airlock even after letting it sit and waiting two days. I added another packet of yeast which seemed to work but the next day there was no more movement and I could only get bubbling in the airlock for a few minutes if I shake the carboy( narrow neck). There seems to be a layer of sediment or other that has settled in the bottom idk if that has anything to do with it. What can I do? Can the qine still be salvaged?
Hi, I have the same problem, no bubbles at all… Did you find a solution ?
What temperature is it in the room where you have your wine?
Hi, thank you for your reply!
It has finally started to make bubbles. We had to take out a certain amount of the mixture and add some more water and more yeast. We were afraid it was too sour for the yeast to work correctly 🙂
Bit of a long story but I prepared the wine for primary fermentation and sat it aside but there was no bubbling in my airlock so I assumed that the first packet of yeast didn’t take off. So after two days of monitoring I finally added a second packet of yeast that did start fermentation but now a day later I can only get any bubbling in the airlock if I shake the carboy (narrow neck). Idk what I should do anymore. Is the wine salvageable?
btw there is a layer of sediment or other at the bottom and the wine level is already up to the neck.
Possibly. Try reading this to troubleshoot: https://www.midwestsupplies.com/blogs/bottled-knowledge/how-do-i-fix-a-stuck-fermentation
Hi I made that wine Nd comes out little bitter but taste really good, so little bitterness is normal?
This wine should not be bitter. Sometimes bitterness is caused by too much tannins.
So interesting am soon making mine thnx
Hi Rex! So glad you enjoyed the article.
Hey this is my first time making this mead and I’m really excited! I’m substituting the sugar for honey, would I have to boil the honey with the lemons in the saucepan?
Mmmm! Lemon mead! Some people like to leave honey raw in ferments, and that’s personal preference. It needs to be dissolved in luke warm water to get it to incorporate, but it doesn’t strictly need to be boiled. That said, honey has natural yeast in it, and unless it’s heated you’ll have some wild yeast in there (in addition to the yeast packet). That’s totally fine, and should just add character to the finished drink.
Hi. Does the pith from the lemon not make the wine bitter? I only ask as I once….being lazy….made cordial with whole Lemons rather than zest and juice as the recipe said and the result was a disaster. It’s made me wary of lemons since but I’d love to try this!
Others have used the whole lemon in this recipe without issue. It probably depends on the recipe.
Yeasting alternative…. Once one has the desired yeast for the desired wine, one does not have to buy this yeast again (more or less). After the first fermentation, save about a pint of the bottom liquid and sediment in a capped jar in the refrigerator. This will keep for 2 weeks or longer under refrigeration. Simply use it all or part of it in the next winemaking project. I really don’t know how long this refrigerated yeast will stay alive. Experiment with this. Even freeze some of it.
As per the type of yeast one should use for any wine, I started out using only bakers yeast (not the fast rise yeast) and I always had wonderful results with it. My wines never tasted yeasty or ‘bready’ and the yeast was/is readily available almost everywhere. The only difference that I did experience was that wine yeasts do tend to provide a higher alcohol content than bakers yeast.
As far as using yeast nutrients I can’t say too much on this except that for most of my wines, I never used anything but fruit, sugar, yeast, sometimes raisins, sometimes strong black tea for the tannin and sometimes I use fresh lemon juice (to include the rinds). Mostly, I don’t peel any of the fruit that I use (but it all gets washed as well as possible) and I always include the seeds, as I a lazy and simply don’t remove them. Most recently I have these very young wines that are moving along wonderfully well, using the parameters aforementioned: mango wine, banana wine, cherry wine, cherry-grape wine, mixed fruit wine with leftover wines that I just could not toss out that includes leftover ginger beer, concord grape wine, coffee wine, cherry-berry wine, strawberry wine, and other combinations. I am going to start an apple-ginger wine really soon. I like fresh ginger. I can’t say which is my favorite because as they mellow out, they keep getting better. I give most of my wines away and don’t personally drink much of any alcohol product. One thing for sure…the wine yeast will knock you on your but if you’re not careful in its use.
I generally don’t like following cooking, baking or winemaking directions, but I always study any recipe and then do it my way.
I do use that yeast saving trick as well, and we’ll often chain the little beasties from batch to batch. Good tip!
If I want to make a 3 gallon batch, do I triple all of the Ingradients as well? (With the exception of the yeast)
Yes, that’s correct.
Oh, about using vitamin C for wine stabilization in my first comment…I failed to provide the usage of the vitamin C. Use 1 vitamin C tablet, crushed and dissolved in each gallon of wine and stabilization will be complete. Simple!!!
As in many instances, there can be or are alternatives to many things that we do or wish to do…that we may not be aware of! Such is the stabilization of wines…any wine. I like you do not appreciate the chemicals that are frequently used in such stabilization, such as the sulfur or any other unnatural preservative. Here is one such alternative that I have been using for years that I learned from my wonderful yet alcoholic uncle (who annually made barrels of wine for himself and his friends). He told me once to use 1 vitamin C tablet (crushed and dissolved in the wine) for any stabilization need…any need. It works perfectly and one should not be afraid of this simple, yet complete resolution for stabilization. Another simple and chemical-free method is simply to refrigerate the wine, as that will greatly slow or stop any further fermentation. Just a side note: my uncle, while an alcoholic, was a wonderful person and family man…never drunk or near it…but he liked his beer and wine!