When life gives you lemons... make limoncello!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love
lemonade. You will seldom see my fridge free of lemonade during the summer; and if it is, it's because I just finished drinking a batch of it. My favorite brand is Simply Lemonade - they primarily are Simply Orange, with orange juice, but I think their lemonade is just spectacular, with just the right balance of sweet and sour. But of course, buying a $4 thing of lemonade every week seems a bit excessive, especially when it's extremely simple and easy to make lemonade on your own, and lemons are 3 for $1.


Homemade Lemonade:
9 c. water (ish)
1.5 cups sugar (ish)
5 lemons (or so) (~1 cup lemon juice)
honey, lime juice to taste

I have a 2.5 Quart pitcher, which I fill most of the way up with HOT water (doesn't have to be boiling, but you want the sugar to dissolve into it.) Honestly, I don't measure it out, but it's probably about 9 cups worth of water. Add a cup (or a cup and a half if you like it sweeter) of sugar and STIR. You want that sugar to dissolve fully. If it's not hot enough, you'll have to pour it into a pot and heat it up. This gives your lemonade a nice smooth taste. No graininess! For flavor, I like to add a dash of honey as well, gives it a nice richness.

Let your water cool a bit, then squeeze 5 lemons - switch in a lime or two as well, if you'd like a bit of variety - into the pitcher, and stir again. This should amount to about a cup of lemon juice, give or take, depending on the juiciness and size of the lemons. If you are serving for company, you might want to squeeze into a bowl first, sift out the seeds and the pulp, then pour it it. I like the pulp, so I just toss all the squeezings in and spit out the occasional seed when I drink the stuff. TASTE TASTE TASTE as you make it, to make sure the sweetness and tartness levels are right for YOU. If its not, add more lemon juice, lime juice, honey, sugar, whatever you think it needs. Stick it in the fridge and let chill. Poof! Delicious lemonade. And POOF! A bunch of lemon rinds, which for years went to waste in my kitchen until I learned the error of my ways.

A few years back, my boyfriend and I drove down the coast of California between his home in San Francisco and his school in Santa Barbara. We took our time, stopping to see friends, going camping, and spending a few days in a great B&B in Monteray. The proprietress there had a big, 10 gallon container of homemade limoncello for guests to drink at their leasure, which she was constantly making new batches of because it was so popular. This stuff was fantastic. We couldn't get enough, and finally begged how she made it.

She didn't really have a recipe, she said, because limoncello was so simple. Mix lemons and vodka, let it sit, then add sugar and water to taste and let it sit some more. The hardest part was peeling the 50 lemons or so that went into each huge batch. So, naturally, upon returning home, I made a decision. Every time I make lemonade, I immediately peel the lemons into a little bag which I stick in my freezer. It's not so bad just doing a small batch of 5 or so lemons at a time. Not only does this give me an excuse to make more lemonade than ever, but I also get a great new alcoholic treat which is great to drink straight, with seltzer, or over vanilla ice cream. And yet, it still isn't quite as good as the stuff we had there.... I'm still experimenting, though!

One summer's worth of lemonade gives me more than enough peels to make limoncello for me AND for Christmas presents to various friends. If I had to guess, I'd say 10-12 lemons or so (or 2 batches of lemonade) are probably enough for one batch of limoncello. You want to be sure to peel the lemons such that you don't get a lot of the white stuff (the pith) on the peel - you just want the outer yellow part. Its fine if a little gets in, but if too much does you'll get a bitter taste to your drink.


My initial recipe I got from the excellent blog, Limoncello Quest, where I fully recommend you going to for advice when you make your own limoncello. Now, since then, I've been experimenting with proportions. At the moment, I'm leaning towards:

1) in process: vodka/lemon mix
2) finished: pure white sugar limoncello
3) finished: brown sugar mix limoncello

Limoncello:
one 750 mL bottle of vodka
~1 heaping cup of lemon peels - probably more like 1 1/4
3 cups water
1 1/4 cups white sugar

The process is very simple: put lemons peels into the vodka. (Note that you need a larger bottle than the one the vodka came in, since the lemons clearly add a volume. Not to mention it's hard to get lemon peels in and out of narrow bottle necks, which you'll need to do. I use the one-liter glass bottles from miscellaneous juices.) Let sit for 30-45 days, the longer the better. After that time, heat your water to boiling, and add the sugar, stirring so it dissolves. Let cool, then stir in the vodka/lemon peel mixture. Pour this mix back into bottles (now you will now need more wide-necked bottles, since you've added the extra volume from sugar water!) and let sit another 30-45 days. If you want to cut the time short, I'd cut the FIRST sitting time a little, not the second, since that second rest period really smooths out the taste. Finally, filter the lemon peels and particulates out of the mix by pouring it through cheesecloth or other filters. Bottle, then drink to your liver's content! If you really want to go nuts, you can take the vodka/sugar soaked lemon peels, sprinkle some sugar on them, and munch on them for a tart snack. Or dip them in chocolate and eat them that way... I've done both, and both are tasty, but honestly, most of the lemon peels at this point end up in the bin.

After staining out the lemon peels, I set up a
cheesecloth/funnel filtration system, putting
one cup of limoncello through the cloth
at a time.

Now, I currently have 3 batches of Limoncello: One is still in progress, a lemon/vodka mix that has been sitting for almost 2 months (I've been busy, and need to do the second part soon); one that I've just completed processing; and one that I finished months ago (but that is being depleted fast...).

The brownish, cloudy limoncello is what happens if you realize you are almost of white sugar, and decide to play with the flavoring by using brown sugar rather then going out to the store at 11:30 at night. For this batch, I used a cup of white sugar and 1/3 cup of brown (in 3 cups of water). The sample that I tasted was just as good as the white sugar limoncello, with an interesting, caramel-y undertone. Quite delicious. But I'm not as enthused about giving it away for Christmas - it's just not as nice looking as the pure white sugar one. I may actually run it through some fine coffee filters to see if it helps the look of the drink - cheesecloth just didn't quite cut it, even if it got the big particulates out. We shall see.

By far the most difference comes from playing with the sugar water mix. I tend to prefer a little tarter, which goes well on vanilla ice cream, but the sweeter stuff has its place as a dessert aparatif. It's really a matter of taste, and therefore that is my suggestion: TASTE TASTE TASTE your limoncello as you slowly add in the sugar water, until you are happy with it. THEN bottle and let it rest again. Of course, by varying the amount of water you use, you also choose how diluted your vodka is going to be, and thus how strong your final batch will be, so you can play with that as well.

So, if I add some sugar water to the last bottle of limoncello over the weekend, it should be fine to give away for Christmas. And if I filter the brown sugar mix again through coffee filters, that should ALSO make fine Christmas presents - with enough left over to last me until the next batch! A very good use of leftover lemon peels that would otherwise go into the trash, don't you think?