Healthy and Easy Homemade Herbal Lemonade Recipe With Honey
Enjoy this healthy and easy homemade herbal lemonade with honey and herbs. We’ve taken things up a notch compared to your traditional lemonade recipes. Why not add tasty herbals and sweeten it with a healthy alternative rather than refined sugars. A healthier lifestyle shouldn’t keep you from getting creative. This lemonade tastes great and I hope you enjoy it! Jump to Recipe
The best part about this recipe is that it takes 10 minutes and has all the nourishing benefits of lemons, herbs, and raw honey. With the option to use whey from your leftover cheese. There are two ways to make this tasty lemonade.
What’s So Great About Homemade Herbal Lemonade?
If you’ve ever gone to the grocery store and purchased store-bought lemonade you know it’s not healthy. It’s filled with a large amount of artificial colors, added sugars, and high-fructose corn syrup that don’t love us back. We love to re-create recipes we enjoyed as a child and convert them to healthy nourishing recipes. It’s the simple recipes like ice-cold lemonade that spark joy on a hot summer day. Who doesn’t love a good fresh lemonade? This recipe is sure to fill your taste buds with tangy sweetness! (without the excess sugar)
We try our best to stay away from drinks pre-made at the store. Not that all of them are bad, but majority are. It’s super hard to find a lemonade in store that is sweetened with honey or maple syrup. I see so many sugar-sweetened beverages contain sugar way over the recommended daily values. By avoiding white sugar and artificial sweeteners your body will thank you. Not only that, but this simple homemade recipe won’t spike your blood sugar with the low amounts of natural sweetener. We’ve also included nourishing lemon balm and tasty spearmint.
What Is In Our Homemade Lemonade?
Filtered Water
You can’t have lemonade without water. We have reverse osmosis water and distilled water. You can use whichever you have! Another variation would be to use carbonate water to make it into a spritzer.
Herbs
Since we have lemon balm and spearmint growing in our garden, we opted to add those two herbs. You can add whichever herbs you would like. I’ve seen people make lavender lemonade, chamomile lemonade and the list goes on. You can replace the the lemon balm and spearmint or you can choose not to add herbs. This recipe is very versatile. I personally love to buy from Mountain Rose Herbs since theirs are organic and sourced responsibly. Not only that, but they have every herb you can think of!
Fresh Lemon Juice
We have a lemon tree on our homestead so we are using homegrown lemons. I would suggest purchasing Meyer lemons from the store since those are the sweetest and make for a nice tart lemon too. You can even add orange juice or any fruit juice you prefer. I’ve seen some make blueberry, strawberry, and cherry lemonade. Like I said, very versatile and easy to change up!
Raw Honey
We have chosen raw honey and maple syrup for this recipe. Usually we just use honey but we wanted to experiment with both. I will say the maple syrup added a different kind of sweetness to the lemonade. I personally like both variations. You can even choose to use monk fruit if you need to stay away from sugar all together.
Whey From Home Cheese Making
*Optional*
We have recently started using our raw goats milk to make cheese since we have a lot. As a result we have nourishing whey. It’s full of probiotics that are good for your gut and we hate to waste it! Since whey has a nice tangy flavor we’ve found a great whey lemonade recipe and decided to add it to this herbal lemonade as well. You totally do not have to do this step. If you decide to skip this step, use water in place of the whey.
Simple Steps To Make Homemade Herbal Lemonade
Step 1 choose your herbs of choice
Step 2 steep tea leaves
Step 3 strain tea and add sweetener of choice
Step 4 mix tea into cold water.
Step 5 squeeze lemons
Step 6 mix it all together!
Step 7 Add your ice and decorations.
Step 8 Sip & Enjoy!
Keys To A Successful Homemade Herbal Lemonade
Buy large real lemons that are heavy and easily squeezable. Buy a couple of extra lemons in case you get a dud lemon, we’ve all been there!
To get every last drop of lemon juice, you can soak the lemon in warm water before squeezing them. The warm water helps to relax the juice sachets making it easier to extract the juice.
Don’t forget to add the honey and maple syrup to the hot tea. Honey will not mix well in cold liquid and sits at the bottom of the jar.
Supplies You Need:
- 1/2 gallon glass jar or half gallon pitcher
- Fine Mesh strainer
- Lemon Squeezer (optional, you can squeeze by hand or juice with a juicer)
- 6-8 Lemons ( 6 if you want it less tart and 8 if you want more tart)
- Honey and/or Maple Syrup
- Measuring Cup
- Herbs (optional) I love buying mine from Mountain Rose Herbs here!
- Cheese Whey (optional if you want to make whey lemonade for added health benefits)
How To Serve This Drink
This lemonade is best served cold of course and on hot days this cold drink makes the perfect treat! Add desired amount of ice cubes and you’re on your way to a refreshing glass of lemonade. With this recipe you not only have the fresh lemonade taste but the iced tea taste as well since we’ve added herbal tea in! Full of numerous health benefits.
Add fresh lemon slices for a beautiful presentation. This only takes a little time but make the drink so pretty!
Add fresh herbs to it for beautiful greenery. I like adding fresh lemon balm and spearmint to make it pretty.
You can also add an assortment of fresh fruit such as fresh blueberries, raspberries, and fresh strawberries. My kids love to add berries to their lemonade because it makes the drink fun and pretty! They specifically love blueberry lemonade as they call it. This is also a great way to get extra fruit in your children’s diet.
Add 2-4 Capsules of charcoal to have the detoxifying benefits of lemons and charcoal. Obviously not your regular lemonade recipe. We make this variation often partly because my girls love how it looks with the charcoal. We call this charcoal lemonade. Who doesn’t love a healthy homemade lemonade full of great stuff?
Homemade Lemonade With Herbs and Honey
This homemade herbal lemonade is sweetend with honey and maple syrup. It's perfect for those hot summer days!
Ingredients
- Raw Honey & Maple Syrup (or just choose one)
- Fresh Lemons
- Lemon Balm & Spearmint (or any herb you would like)
- Leftover Cheese Whey (optional, you can use water instead)
- Filtered Water
Instructions
- Choose your herbs of choice and wash thoroughly (You'll need 1 cup of herbs. We used 1/2 cup lemon balm and 1/2 cup spearmint)
- Add tea leaves in 16oz of boiling water
- Let steep for 10 minutes
- Strain Tea into your pitcher.
- Add your sweetener to the hot tea to dissolve. We used 1/4 cup maple syrup and 1/4 cup honey. You can add less or more depending on your preference for sweetness.
- Add 4 cups of water to your sweetened tea.(replace the water with your extra whey if desired)
- Squeeze 6-8 fresh lemons into a measuring cup until you get 1.5 cups of lemon juice.(1 cup will work if you don't like it too tart, just replace the other .5 cup with water)
- Strain lemon juice and add to your pitcher.
- Stir and add ice!
Notes
Since we used honey, you will need to put your honey in the hot tea in order for it to desolve. Honey will not mix in cold liquid. Surprisingly maple syrup will mix into cooler water though.
Remember you do not have to use cheese whey. We chose to use ours since we had extra from making goats cheese. I have adjusted the recipe for you to use water and still get a great tasting lemonade.
If you do make whey lemonade using this recipe I would use 4 lemons instead of 6-8 since whey naturally has a tangy flavor. We found it perfect with 4 cups of whey and 4 lemons!
If you want to just use honey, I would start with 1/2 cup of honey and see if that is sweet enough before adding the ice in. You can add less if you feel like 1/2 cup may be too sweet.
If you want to add in fresh fruit, you can add that last!
Have you made your own lemonade? I’d love to know the variations you’ve made at home! Let me know in the comments below.
Yum! My lemon balm is growing like crazy right now so I will definitely be making this asap!
Mine is too! I love lemon balm so much it really fits perfectly in this recipe. I hope you enjoy!
This looks so yummy! We are always looking for delicious drink recipes for the summer — I’m pinning this one to try later! Thank you!
I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
This looks so refreshing. I love lemonades, but really only homemade recipes. This looks like a great one to try… I’m all for homemade drinks! I think I like drinks more than other types of recipes lol…
Haha I’m a sucker for good drink recipes as well! Nothing like a refreshing drink on a hot day
I never would have thought to use whey for this! I love this idea!
It gives it such a good tangy flavor! My children even love it which says a lot lol!
This looks delicious and perfect for both spring and summer! We have quite a bit of spearmint in the garden and I now have a recipe to try!
Hi Lauren, That sounds awesome! I Hope you enjoy!