Last Friday I used every measuring cup in the house while working on the next stage of my home made limoncello recipe. The alcohol base sat for 3 week to soak up all the lemon flavour from the rind. A few taste tests revealed that even the tiniest bit of white pith really does make the mixture very bitter. I was warned about this in all of the books that I referred to but it takes a delicate hand to peel lemons and not have any pith on the rind. In fact, peeling ten lemons with as little pith as possible is quite a feat, my wrists were quite displeased. As a result, I think my limoncello will have something of a bitter bite/after taste.
This time, when I made the simple syrup I remembered to measure out the cooled syrup first before adding it to the alcohol. Which is important because this syrup recipe resulted in 5 cups of syrup and my ratio would have been out of whack. This specific limoncello recipe calls for a 1:1 ratio of syrup to alcohol. Aside from the bitterness, which I hope balances out over time with the addition of the syrup, another detail I observed was the colour. The lemon alcohol looked a hell of a lot like urine. The colour is a tad unappetizing. Thank god it smells good. Although once I added the syrup, the colour did lighten a bit. The 2 1/2 bottles of limoncello that I ended up with are now sitting in a cool, dry place for at least another 2 weeks.
Two additional things you can do that really affect the taste of limoncello: refrigerating the digestive itself (not freeze) and freeze the serving glasses. I have 4 frozen limoncello glasses from Positano in my freezer at this very moment, waiting for the moment my Limoncello is ready. I am pretty psyched to finally try the finished product.
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| Removing the Lemon peel |
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| Lemon Vodka |
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| Mixing syrup and alcohol, Bottling process |
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