Hard lemonade is an alcopop with a similar alcohol content to beer. Mike’s Hard Lemonade was the first brand, created in 1999. It is popular with young drinkers who prefer a less strong alcoholic taste. Recipes for homemade hard lemonade are available online. It is important to drink responsibly and not overdo sweet drinks.
Hard lemonade is a form of alcopop, a flavored malt drink with about the same alcohol content as bottles of beer. Early forms of alcopops included wine coolers, which used wine instead of malt. In the late 1980s, however, brands like Zima became popular. This led to the concept of creating lemonade that also had alcohol content. The first company to do this, and probably still the most recognizable by brand, was Mike’s Hard Lemonade, first produced in 1999.
Because of the slightly acidic taste of lemonade, adding malt flavor, and often some carbonation, doesn’t affect the taste of the lemonade much. The drink tends to be preferred by young drinkers who don’t particularly like a strong alcoholic taste. It has a little more bite and is slightly tarter than traditional lemonade and, of course, contains alcohol. There are some related alcopop versions that aren’t called hard lemonade, such as Smirnoff Ice.
There are certainly other fruit juices that have lent themselves to becoming alcoholics in nature. Apple cider, for example, is in some cases always a hard cider, although in the United States it is more common to find the soft cider version, which does not contain alcohol. Lemonade could be added to a variety of mixed drinks, but was not normally used to ferment alcohol and create hard lemonade. However, with the popularity of commercial hard lemonade, there are now numerous recipes online dedicated to making the drink, which usually mix lemonade concentrate, sugar, and yeast, and ferment the mixed ingredients for about five days to about three weeks, depending on how strong you want results.
As mentioned, most commercial forms of lemonade are about equivalent to the same amount of beer, although some obscure varieties may be higher in alcohol content. Since you’re basically downing a beer to hard lemonade, you need to be sure you’re not too drunk and have designated drivers if you’re away from home. It’s also easy to overdo sweet drinks that don’t taste particularly alcoholic. They can be easy to drink quickly, regardless of how much alcohol you’ve consumed. In any situation where you are consuming alcohol, sip slowly and vary by drinking alcoholic beverages with lots of soft drinks.
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