Limoncello

Almost two years ago I found a recipe that looked really intriguing and delicious. Then about half a year later I finally managed to get it started and try it out. Now this limoncello is an absolute favorite of my brother in law, Clint, and his wife, Brenda. So here I am making another batch for his birthday gift.
The recipe is from this website. The author is super friendly and responds to comments really fast if you have questions for her.

Feel free to check out her recipe and website. I want to make sure she gets the traffic for writing such a great post.

This is what you need! Two bottles of ever clear and about 20 lemons to zest. (Later on you will need 4 cups of sugar, and 6 cups of water)

Make sure you have a big container too.

Micro plane zesters are super useful, as well as super sharp and prone to slicing part of my thumb off... Be careful!

This is my fabulous getup:

Time to watch a bunch of Netflix and zest a million lemons.

Make sure you don't zest off too much. The white part of the peel is really bitter, so it's better to zest a bit too little off of your lemons than too much.

Look at all my zesty goodness:

And from on top:

Now dump your awesome alcohol into the jar:

Oh, yeah:

Now let it all marinate for at least a month! You'll know it's ready when the lemon zest pieces are all white and brittle.

Once it's been soaking for at least a month, add simple syrup. I just make my own really easy. All you need is sugar and water.
Simply dissolve 4 cups of sugar in 6 cups of water. Heat it in a stove. I let it come to a boil for a few minutes because it will be a bit of a thicker syrup. It's important to let it cool completely before putting the syrup into the jar.

Once you've added the syrup back into your jar, let it sit for at least another week. Longer if you can. The longer it soaks the more it can mellow. This will make the flavor more smooth.

After a week you can strain out the lemon zest. I recommend double straining it. I use a sieve and a coffee filter or a cheesecloth. The more finely it's strained, the clearer the alcohol will become. You don't really want any stray zest pieces clouding up your limoncello.

Here you can see I used a ladle to ladle the liquid into the strainers.

Because I like mine a little sweeter I made some more simple syrup. When bottling the limoncello I added a little extra syrup to the bottom of each bottle before I added in the limoncello.

I got these bottles, plus these two little bottles we made up for our friend Ryan's birthday:

My husband experimented with the new sealing wax my mom gave us for Christmas! I think they look crazy cool!

When you hold them up to the light they look a lot brighter, but as you may have noticed over these posts, I'm more of a night owl, so sometimes I'm lacking the light.

In conclusion this is a super easy recipe to make with only 4 ingredients. It's just time consuming, but only in the way that there is a long wait time, so not a long active time. So plan ahead. I started this in October or November so it would be ready for Christmas. It will stay good almost indefinitely.