What to make with this year's amazing crop of Lemons

Lemons III

Wicked, 40° Proof Limoncello

There is nothing, but nothing so refreshing after usually, a big meal, than a shot or even two, no more, of ice cold Limoncello.  Better still home-made Limoncello.  It is an absolute doddle to make once you have convinced your friendly local pharmacist to sell you 96% alcohol.  You might even have to bribe him or her with a cheeky sample!

Ingredients

12 x Organic or at least, pesticide free lemons

1 litre 96 % pure food grade alcohol

Distilled water

1125 gm white granulated sugar

Equipment

1 x 4 litre seal-able glass jar

3 x snap top 1 x litre bottles

1 x "Lancashire" potato peeler

1 x large funnel

1 pack coffee filter papers

Method

Wash and thoroughly scrub the lemons and dry them

Similarly wash and dry the large glass container, inside and out.

Using the potato peeler remove the zest from the lemons, taking care to avoid the pith 

Put the zest into the large jar and add all the alcohol, neat.

Seal the jar and put it in a cool dark place.  Give it a shake every day for eight days or so to extract the lemon flavours. Don't ask me why eight, that's just how I do it, it seems the optimum time to extract all the lemon oil from the zest, without the alcohol turning bitter.

After eight days, remove the zest from the liquid in the jar and put it into a jug.  This is to make sure that you don't loose the alcohol that drips from it. The alcohol will have turned from being colourless to a beautiful vivid yellow.-0

Carefully decant the alcohol from the large jar into a large glass jug, temporarily.

Wash and dry the large glass jar, making sure all the zest residue has been cleaned out

Put all the sugar into the jar and then using the funnel and filter papers, filter all the lemon infused alcohol back into it.  Strangely, even though the alcohol looks bright and sparkling, it still contains small particles of lemon, which means that you may need to use several changes of filter paper.  When all the alcohol has been put back, put the lid on and lightly close it, then give the whole lot a jolly good shake.

Finally carefully measure out 1.35 litres of distilled water and add it to the sugar/alcohol mixture.  If you want your drink a little less punchy, 36% is often used by drinks manufacturers as a control point. 

If 36% is your preference add 1.7 litres of distilled water.  When all the water has been added, reseal the jar and shake it well to fully dissolve the sugar.  The brew will turn slightly cloudy, due to a cheeky little scientific phenomenon called spontaneous emulsification.

Spontaneous emulsification may occur when immiscible liquids in non-equilibrium conditions are in contact.  So now you understand, Simples!

Then let it rest for half an hour to fully infuse whilst you have a cup of tea!

The last step is to give the large jar a good shake to check that all the sugar has been dissolved, then once more using the funnel, fully bottle off the finished limoncello into the snap top bottles.This recipe will make slightly less than 3 litres of product

Just a suggestion, if you plan to make gifts of the Limoncello, use 500 ml bottles.  Even though this is a home-made drink, it isn't cheap, the base pure alcohol is the catch, at least here in Spain where I live.