Homemade Chokecherry Lemonade (using Chokecherry Syrup)

If you’re looking for the perfect late summer drink, make some of our delicious chokecherry lemonade. This cool and refreshing drink is a great way to use seasonal late summer chokecherries and chokecherry syrup!

Late summer is the perfect time of year for chokecherry recipes when the chokecherries are ripe and ready for picking, and this lemonade is the best refreshing drink for transitioning from late summer into fall when the weather is still warm during midday.

For this recipe, you’ll need 1) to make some homemade chokecherry syrup, or 2) have purchased chokecherry syrup on hand.

This lemonade recipe was created using our lemonade base recipe (with some tweaks) and our homemade chokecherry syrup. I’m not sure how other types of chokecherry syrups compare to our homemade version in thickness or sweetness, so if you use a purchased syrup you may need to adjust the amount of syrup you use in this lemonade.

What are chokecherries?

We have quite a bit of background info on chokecherries in our post for chokecherry syrup, but for a quick rundown, chokecherries are a wild fruit that is native to North America and is closely related to black cherries (chokecherries are Prunus virginiana and black cherries are Prunus serotina).

Chokecherries are not the same as chokeberries, which are Aronia berries. Some chokecherry trees have green leaves and some have red leaves (like the Canada Red/Schubert variety in our backyard), but all chokecherries have a pit inside that are somewhat toxic (much like apple seeds or cherry pits) and that toxicity can be eliminated or reduced by cooking and drying.

The way our homemade syrup is prepared, you don’t need to worry about the seeds being mildly toxic. You only need to be concerned about this if you’re consuming large quantities of raw chokecherry seeds (which I obviously don’t recommend doing).

Make sure to positively ID any wild berries before eating. If you aren’t sure, contact your local extension office for help IDing wild berries in your areas, or purchase pre-made chokecherry syrup online.

How to make chokecherry lemonade

Here are the steps to make our chokecherry lemonade (this is an overview, the full recipe is at the end of the post):

• Make your homemade chokecherry syrup unless you decide to purchase pre-made syrup. Since the recipe is lengthy and in-depth, I can’t repeat all of the steps here in this post, the full recipe and details are available in our syrup post.
• Wash and juice your fresh lemons, straining out the seeds, to measure out 1¼ cups of fresh lemon juice.
• Add the lemon juice to a 2-quart saucepan along with the sugar, 1 cup of water, and the lemon slices (make sure the seeds are removed from the lemon slices).
• Don’t skip the lemon slices in this recipe, they add delicious lemon peel oil that adds extra layers of lemon flavor and mellows the tartness.

• Bring this to a simmer over medium heat, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 12-15 minutes, the lemon slices should become translucent.
• Turn off the heat, remove the lemon slices, and whisk in the chokecherry syrup.
• Fill a 2-quart pitcher with 1 quart (4 cups) of ice and pour the lemonade mixture over the ice in the pitcher and stir to dissolve the ice.
• Add cold water to fill up the pitcher to the 2-quart line and serve over ice and store in the fridge.
• Taste test this and see if it needs additional sweetness depending on how tart your lemons are, and add additional chokecherry syrup if it needs more sugar.

Even though the chokecherry syrup is purple, it will turn the lemonade red and look a bit like our raspberry lemonade!

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