The Making of Limoncello

It was early 1900 at a boarding house on the island of Azzurra. The lady Maria Antonia Farace raised a garden of lemons while her nephew became the proud owner of a post-war bar in the same area. Using what they said was a recipe handed down through their family, they began offering complimentary shot glasses of a daring, brightly colored lemon liqueur they called Limoncello. After dinner, the travelers would sip what Maria called a “digestivo,” and the word of the delicious lemon drink soon spread across Capri.

Or wait! Perhaps it was Vincenza Canale and his Inn with those travelers! The truth is, the history of Limoncello is as varied as the people it comes from. Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri…it doesn’t matter the location, they all have similar stories and legends of it’s mixed and varied history and perhaps they are all correct. Whosever grandma originally bottled the stuff is a mystery and will likely always stay that way. The good news is…we have it to make for ourselves, and that’s what I want to talk about.

Limoncello is an incredibly smooth, sweet, delicious drink that is meant to be sipped with dessert after dinner from tall thin shot glasses. It is particularly good with Italian desserts, but drinking it with any kind of chocolate dessert will pair very well too. Making it is quite simple, though all you really need is time and patience. I started my first batch last night, and it was fairly time consuming but not hard. I’m going to tell you how to get your first batch started as well.

You’ll need some items to get started. Here, I’ve purchased two glass jars with seal rims. They were $6.99 each from Cost Plus World Market. Sun tea jars work well too, but stay away from plastic jars or jars that had something in them previously that wasn’t limoncello. You’re going to be letting this sit for 4 months, any residue that is left over is going to taint your limoncello.

I’m only making one batch right now, but my second jar is going to be started next month and will be a double batch for Christmas. Limoncello makes an excellent Christmas present when given in beautiful little sealed jars with personalized tags. Cost Plus World Market has many wonderful sized jars that work well for this.

 

Next you will need the alcohol. Here’s where things get a little controversial. Everyone who makes Limoncello has an opinion about what kind of alcohol to use. Some will die saying you can only use Vodka. Others will decry heaven saying that you must use Everclear grain alcohol or go home, heathen. They are both right, in a way. Traditionally, the drink was made with grain alcohol…OR Vodka. But the Vodka at the time was not quite so commercialized and low proof. Limoncello is meant to be kept in the freezer, and these days, Vodka will freeze, at least partially, in the freezer if it isn’t high enough proof. And if it is high enough proof, it is made with potatoes which will change the taste of your Limoncello! The best way to make this drink is by using BOTH alcohols. You don’t need a super high end Vodka, Smirnoff works well, which is what I’ve been recommended to use. These two bottles together cost a little less than $30.

 

You’re also going to need lemons! You’re also going to need a vegetable brush of some kind to clean them and a good vegetable/fruit cleaner. Commercial lemons, no matter how organic, come to you covered in a wax and chemicals which keep the lemons looking their brightest and best the longest. You have to get that crud off. The trouble is you can’t really see this stuff, so you’re just going to have to scrub them well and use the vegetable cleaner, it’ll help. Scrubscrubscrub, you don’t want that junk in your drink.

Also, beware of Sunkist lemons. I didn’t realize that Sunkist stamps their lemons with a green stamp that is harder than hell to scrub off. Fortunately, I only bought 5 of that kind. How many lemons do you need? Well, that’s also a good controversy. Some say you need 10 for one batch, or 15, or 20. And they should be organic. I have 15 organic lemons, and 5 non-organic because the organic lemons were pretty small with thin skins. Here’s a quick lemon lesson: The lemons you can buy in the store are nothing like the lemons you buy on the Amalfi coast from roadside vendors that are used to make traditional limoncello. You’ll never get limoncello like they do because their lemons are just better for it. They have super thick skins that have a high level of lemony oil in them. Our skins are very thin. So I’ll say 20 is better, but if you can get good sized lemons with good thick skins, 15 will work too. I think 10 is probably not enough.

After you scrub your lemons clean, it’s time to peel them. I used a potato peeler, but you can use a knife if you want to, though I don’t recommend it unless you are very good at using it. The potato peeler will make sure you don’t dig too deep into the skin when you are removing the lemony outer skin. Beneath the yellow skin is a white substance called the Pith. The Pith is very, very bitter and you want as little of it in your limoncello as possible. It’ll alter your limoncello making it bitter, and no one wants that. So using your potato peeler, remove the yellow skin without getting the white stuff. Any white stuff that sticks to your skin, use a knife to scrape it off. This is the time consuming part, but you want it done as good as possible.

Here’s another controversial subject to talk about. Some people say peel it, others say zest it. Anyone who says you should zest it is an idiot. A lot of the oil is going to stick to your microplane as you zest, for one, and you want it all to go into your drink. For two, zest is so tiny and broken apart that filtering it all out is going to be time consuming and you may never get it all out and you don’t want anything grainy in your finished product. Save yourself time and heartache and just peel it. The bigger the slice the better.

 

Here’s what you’ll have when you’re done with all that. You can already see the alcohol turning yellow. This is only 1 batch, though next time I”m going to make a double batch and fill the bottle.

Here’s where it gets fun. Make a label or a tag to throw around the neck of the jar that tells you want date you made it and what date it will be done. From the day you make the jar, count of 4 months. That’s when it’ll be ready for the next step.

Four months?!?!?! Yes my friends, four months. Honestly, if you could leave it alone for a year, that’d be even better. This is definitely a drink that gets better and better with time. Anyone who tells you it will be ready in two weeks or two months is, well, being honest, but they are mislead. You could have it ready in 2 weeks or 2 months, but it isn’t going to be very good, it’s definitely not going to be authentic, and you might as well go buy a commercial bottle of limoncello, that’s about what you’re getting. Trust me, put it away for 4 months. Do it. Don’t open it before 4 months. Every day or every couple of days, give the bottle a good swish to move the alcohol around and re disperse it. If you can keep it in a cool dark place in your basement, that’s best. But if you’re like me, you don’t have a cool dark basement in the summer and you will need to keep it in your fridge. Some say you shouldn’t keep it cold, and maybe you shouldn’t, but cold is preferable to hot which is what it would be in my basement. Oh if only I were blessed with a root cellar.

In 4 months you’re going to pull it out, scoop out the lemon pieces with a slotted spoon, and start filtering the drink with a funnel and some coffee filters. You’re going to filter it with about 6 coffee filters (wetting the filters first before pouring the alcohol through) You should get everything out of the drink leaving it a lovely uniform shade of yellow. You’re going to make a syrup with 6 cups of sugar and 5 cups of water which will be added to the alcohol and set aside at room temperature for about a week or two. Then…well then it’ll be ready to bottle. I’ll have some large bottles that go into my freezer for every day drinking, and I’ll probably bottle a couple of small bottles for friends and family to try.

Drink responsibly! This stuff is strong! Sip it slowly, don’t drink a lot of it at a time, enjoy it with dessert. If you’re under 21, you’re not even allowed so just move on.

When 4 months comes, we’ll return to this subject and I’ll show you the pictures of how I make the syrup.