May or may not work

[oldbloke]

Started my attempt at half-strength limoncello today
Except limoncello = spirit flavoured with zest, and I'm just fermenting a lot of sugar with a lot of lemon juice...
And mine will likely end up clear or nearly so, and limoncello isn't.
And I'm going to try to make it sparkling, and limoncello isn't.
Nothing like limoncello really.
Hmmmm.

[Geezah]

I made a 10% abv lemon drink once purely by using lemon juice, zest, sugar, water & yeast.
It was very sharp, strong, and made me positively evil the day after drinking it.

[oldbloke]

10% ?
I've stuck 1.5kg of sugar in this, to make a gallon. Which should be about 15. Maybe I won't do it sparkling but serve as a spritzer over ice. What might be good to mix to make it spritz, I wonder?

[boingy]

We made a decent version. Not the same as the real thing but most agreeable. Can't remember the recipe off hand but it was very simple. Something like lemon zest steeped in cheap vodka and sugar for just a few days. Very good neat on plenty of ice. I can probably dig out the recipe if you are interested.

[oldbloke]

We generally do various fruit flavoured spirits in the run up the christmas but the hedgerows have been rub round here this year so a lemon vodka sounds like fun, if you let me know how much zest I'm up for that one.

[Pinto]

Sounds more like a hard lemonade to me .....another recipe I want to get round to sometime.

Listening to people extracting lemon or orange essence reminds me of mispent lab time at uni - we "borrowed" equipment to steam distill oranges and lemons to make essential oils for making the large quantities of "morinov" we drunk paletable

[sbond10]

You can actually buy lemonchello flavouring so if you made a water sugar and yeast liquid and added this to it floured by half a bottle of vodka it could work

[oldbloke]

You can actually buy lemonchello flavouring so if you made a water sugar and yeast liquid and added this to it floured by half a bottle of vodka it could work

Feh, that's just cheating.


I've run out of soft fruits now. So it must be time for either parsnip and/or carrot, or something wacky like fruity teabags. Though I ought to do the second half of that sorghum lager kit really. And buy some decent maize that might actually malt properly.

[boingy]

Couldn't lay my hands on the recipe. I know I emailed it to my better half from work but we can't find it.

So from memory:

Half a bottle of cheap vodka. The recipe called for over-proof stuff but we're too stingy to pay those prices so the Tesco value stuff will do.
8 lemons
4 oz sugar (this is the bit we can't quite be exact on but, hey, it's meant to be sticky and sweet, right?)

Method:
1. Remove all the zest from the lemons, avoiding the pith. After a few minutes with a grater I switched to carefully paring the zest off with a very sharp knife. Quicker, and more dangerous if you cut yourself as much as I do.

2. Drink the first half of the vodka bottle to make enough space. Add the zest to the remainder and give it a good shake a couple of times a day for as long as you like. Pretty sure we only did it for 4-5 days.

3. Strain through a sieve to remove the lemon bits.

4. Dissolve the sugar in as little warm water as you can then add it to the bottle once it is cooled below blood temperature. Shakey shakey a few times and you are done. The recipe did mention filtering through coffee paper to make it nice and clear but ours was only a tad cloudy and tasted great.

Oh, and we found the best use for the zest-less lemons was to leave them in the fridge for a few weeks/months and then chuck them out. Weird how some go mouldy and some just dry out completely.

I know what you mean on the wild fruit front. Hardly any sloes this year and the blackberries were so sporadic you could only pick a handful or so each day. I've grown a few rasps so they and strawberries have gone into a Rum Topf. You know the drill, bit of fruit, cover with booze, add a bit of sugar. Repeat.

[Phaal]

We use a very similar technique, but slightly less 'sophisticated'...

Take one bottle of vodka (nothing special...the cheapo stuff will suffice) and empty half into a glass jug (drink the rest!). Add the peel of three lemons, cover with clingfilm) and leave for 3-5 days in the fridge.

Take an equal amount of water and add the sugar whilst warming to make the sugar-syrup. Allow to cool.

Strain the lemony vodka and add the sugar-syrup. An initial taste can give some indication of sweetness, but really this should be left for at the very least a couple of weeks in the fridge. Add a little extra sugar should the concoction be a little too sharp for your taste.

Very simple, and makes a nice limoncello...

For something a little more interesting, substitute the vodka for grappa...