Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
Easy recipe for Hindu fermented lemonade, a lightly cultured traditional beverage to add probiotics and enzymes to any meal.
For those of you who are wanting to take the leap and start adding a daily probiotic element to your whole foods diet, this recipe for fermented lemonade, also called Hindu lemonade, is an all-time favorite of traditional foodies.
It is as easy as it is delicious, pleasing both child and parent alike.
This type of healthy beverage is also the answer to those sugar-laden, juice boxes that most kids have packed in their school lunches every day. Worse, that sugar is frequently a juice blend with added GMO high fructose corn syrup.
Even a 100% juice box is still just sugar in the final analysis. Once you pasteurize fresh juice, the nutrition is long gone and all that remains is obesity-promoting fructose and a sugar spike/crash for the child. Not the best choice for school lunch by any means!
How to Make Hindu Lemonade
Packing this homemade fermented lemonade, on the other hand, is a nice treat that will delight, nourish, and strengthen your childโs immune system.
Fresh whole milk a great choice for a school lunch (when the kids were young, I usually packed a thermos of cold, fresh milk โฆ sometimes I packed sipping bone broth too), but when you have run out temporarily or just want to pack a juice treat, this is a great choice.
Note that using freshly squeezed lemon juice produces the most reliable results. Using pasteurized store juice does work, but you run the risk of mold.
Why is this? Store lemon juice is pasteurized, which eliminates the natural probiotics and enzymes that faciliate the fermentation to โtakeโ properly.
Fermented Lemonade Recipe
Easy recipe for fermented lemonade that will no doubt be one of your familyโs favorites as it is rich in flavor and probiotics.
Ingredients
- 6-8 medium lemons or 1- 1.5 cups of lemon juice (preferably fresh squeezed)
- 1/2 cup sucanat
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg preferably organic
- 2 quarts filtered water
- 1/2 cup liquid whey
- vegetable starter optional. Use if you prefer dairy free starter.
Instructions
-
Mix all ingredients together in a 1 gallon glass jug.ย
-
Cover and leave on the counter for 2 days and then transfer to the refrigerator.ย
-
The lemonade flavor improves over time, but is drinkable immediately after the 2 day fermentation period.
-
If it is too tart compared with the overly sweet lemonades from the store, mix 1 or 2 drops plain liquid stevia to each glass until your family adjusts to the mildly sweet/sour flavor.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
Limes or a combination of lemons and limes may be substituted for the lemons. The juice must be freshly squeezed.
Reference
More Information
Switchel: Natureโs Healthy Gatorade
How to Make Orangina (Fermented Orange Juice)
How to Make Ginger Ale
Brew Your Own Healthy and Traditional Root Beer
Dear Sarah,
I made your Hindu lemonade and it has always been delicious ( even after five days ). I never saw any bubbles in it though, and I wonder if it is because I live in Michigan and it is twenty degrees outside now ( I can only afford to keep my house heat at sixty degrees ). Do you think that I should buy a lab-type incubator, and put my lemonade into it so that the bacteria will be able to multiply ? I would be willing to do this, because I love this Hindu lemonade and hope to always have it on hand, and I want to have it teeming with the healthy bacteria ( Lactobacilli ?) Maybe a yogurt maker would work ? Please help me on this – and I guess when it’s summer in Michigan , the healthy bacteria will flourish anyway. Should I buy the incubator box, and do you know where I could buy one ?
Hi, I just wanted to share a tip for those people whose kitchen is not warm enough for fermentation. I put my stuff in the oven and keep light on. It works good enough. Also you can use dough proofing function of your oven, if your oven has one of course.
Josella.
I used to make yogurt at home in Chicago (if I remember correctly it was during winter and I left the jar on top of the old style gas range, the next day the yogurt was done. Yes, it needs to be in a warm place for the bacteria to grow, unless you add some culture to it. I sqeezed some lemons and put the juice in a bottle in the refrigerator and I didn’t use it all that fast, so I ended up with fermented lemon juice (so it can be done in the refrigerator also, it will take longer though, that’s how I ran across this website). I just added some maple syrup to it and brewed fresh tea and mixed all together and I had a big bottle before breakfast. It was very good, no whey added. Yes, you can use an yogurt maker (it keeps the temp. constant) and you can find it on-line.
I made this and it is delicious. My concern, it is forming tiny hard black, almost like very tiny pebbles that are at the bottom. Does anyone know what this is?
I made this and it was delicious! Also, my roommate gets terrible stomach aches (when ever she really starchy meals like potatoes). Literally, she was pacing around, moaning with an ice pack on her stomach. I gave her about 5 oz. of the hindu lemonade and with in an hour her stomach had called down. She was able to sleep through the night where normally she’d be up all night sick. That’s the power of probiotics!
How would this stack up probiotic wise to Kefir or Kombucha? I’ve made this and we love it. Would it be ok to drink this lemonade until I can make some Kefir or Kombucha? Or is Kefir or Kombucha more powerful probiotic wise and I should learn to make either of those ASAP? Thanks!
forgot to add – my kids don’t like ‘herbs and spices’ so I don’t add the nutmeg, tastes good without. One day I’ll try it with. My fair-trade organic brown cane sugar is also vanilla flavoured (I save all my pods and put them in the sugar sack). Maybe that helps the taste, you can’t taste the vanilla, but it tastes good. I rely on the taste – if there was mould and it smelled bad, I certainly wouldn’t drink it. The foam seems to be part of the process, and as it doesn’t smell bad, I don’t really bother about it.
I’ve now made this 4 times – its great. I let it stand in my kitchen (temp around 16-18 celsius (dkn what this is farenheit – the empire was a long time ago) for 2 days by which time it has a degree of carbonation that is just to my liking – ie quite fizzy. I love it. If you’re that way inclined (and we are) with a quality gin it makes a fantastic ‘gin and tonic/lemon-ade’. Its going to stay as a standard in my kitchen for a long time. And its nutritional too. Thanks Sarah, for the steer – I have ‘Nourishing Traditions’ and use it constantly, but its listed oddly in that and I would not have thought of making it if you hadn’t made this video. Of course, as a side effect, it means I have a lot of ‘cream cheese’ (from making the whey) and the kids LOVE that – I don’t/won’t buy the branded cream cheese because of the horrific ingredient list, but this, they say, ‘tastes just like __.”. Thanks again. Lesley
i have just made your lacto hindu lemonade but is just didnt seem to ferment. what did i do wrong. i love your videos.tha nk you sarah
Hi Sarah,
I tried to make a change in your receipe and put some freshly blended strawberries and just one lemon, the result was fantastic! very bubbly and sweet!
The following time I tried to make it again but without sugar, after 4-5 days the fermentation didn’t occur but I drank it anyway because it didn’t taste bad.
The problem is that now it’s been three days that I feel some air in my stomach and don’t know if it’s caused by something else.
My question is, can a beverage like this one be safely drunk even if after 4-5 days didn’t fermented? Thanks!!