Passover Alcohol Week! Part 4: Sima

To read from Part 1, begin here.

To read the other recipes, click here and here.

Sima is basically alcoholic lemonade. Like the mead and cider, you can add herbs, spices, and fruit juices to add extra flavors.

Ingredients

• Distilled water
• 3-4 lemons per gallon of water
• 1 ½ c white sugar per gallon of water

Thinly slice the lemons and put them in a bowl with the sugar. Add boiling water and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add this to the carboy, then add the distilled water to fill the carboy. Once again, let the water cool before adding the yeast.

When It’s Ready (The Same For All These Recipes)

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for the finale in this series, and tips for buying alcohol for Passover as well!

Photo credit: Gabriela Geselowitz