Hard Raspberry Lemonade

My brother got me a fermenter (Mr. Beer brand, basically a 2+ gallon keg with a vent and spigot) for Christmas. While my first batch of beer undergoes secondary fermentation, I thought I'd try a fermented fruit beverage. Quick searches on the internet informed me that this would be incredibly easy - make sure you have enough sugar and you're good to go. My first trial is a hard raspberry lemonade.

Recipe:
3 cans frozen lemonade concentrate (I got mine from Trader Joe's - any brand should work, just make sure it contains real sugar and no preservatives)
1 bag frozen raspberries (again, I got mine from Trader Joe's)
4.5 cups honey (given enough time, I'd experiment with varying amounts of honey - it changes sweetness and alcohol content)

Make sure all utensils and fermenter are sterilized.
In saucepan, combine lemonade concentrate with 1.5 qt water, bring to boil, lower heat to simmer. Slowly add honey, making sure it all dissolves. Add raspberries, cook until raspberries are mushy and releasing juice. Turn off heat. Put 4 qt cold water into fermenter. Add lemonade-honey-raspberry mixture to fermenter. Add more cold water to get total volume to 8.5 qts. Start yeast (put some yeast into 1 cup warm water with sugar and yeast nutrient) - I used champagne yeast (given time, will experiment with different yeasts). Pour yeast into fermenter and stir, put lid on fermenter and let sit for some time. After 4-5 days I found it had a good sweetness-to-alcohol profile, so I bottled (old screw-top wine bottle) and refrigerated (to slow the fermentation process) some and let the rest continue to complete fermentation (all sugar converted to alcohol). A future update will say how well this worked.


Note: It tasted really good straight out of the fermenter 5 days in (still sweet, a bit fizzy, alcohol probably 5-6%), which IMO would be the optimal time to serve. (I realize this would require scheduling a party to coincide with the fermentation schedule - maybe someday I will do this.)