#6 meant to be my best to date, liquor filtered 6x and rested with zest for 90 days. Back to usual sugar concentration. Good light color and smell. Nice lemony flavor, more so than batch #4 and though it’s quite a bit sweeter it’s still relatively balanced. Picks are that it’s still a little syrupy sweet and there are off flavors probably associated with the non-organic lemons used.

Liquor: Two 750ml bottles of Everclear 151
Liquor filtration: 6x
Lemons: 17 Non-organic, waxed and scrubbed
Days peels and liquor rested: 90
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 4, Cups Water: 5
Days syrup rested with infusion: 30
Final filtration: 4x

For batch #5, I forgot to filter the liquor so I know this will be on the rough side. I consider it almost a wasted batch if I don’t filter the liquor because the flavor is so much harsher than filtered batches. The color is on the darker side as my batches go, closer to some mass-produced versions I’ve seen. The flavor is first very sweet and lemony but quickly turns to the unfiltered Everclear punch that contorts your face. Since I’ve discovered the difference in smoothness due to filtering it’s almost unforgivably rough tasting. Unless I forget I’ll never use unfiltered Everclear again and this is a lesson that should help.

Liquor: Two 750ml bottles of Everclear 151
Liquor filtration: None
Lemons: 17 Non-organic, waxed and scrubbed
Days peels and liquor rested: 66
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 4, Cups Water: 5
Days syrup rested with infusion: 30
Final filtration: 4x

I haven’t had a batch to post about in a while and now I have several. Here is the first of the new crop:

Liquor: Two 750ml bottles of Everclear 151
Liquor filtration: 5x
Lemons: 17 Non-organic, waxed and scrubbed
Days peels and liquor rested: 63
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 3, Cups Water: 5
Days syrup rested with infusion: 30
Final filtration: 4x

The big difference in this batch was the use of less sugar, I used one cup less than normal to see if I could reduce the overly sweet taste of my standard recipe. The smell and color of the finished product looked good, perhaps a bit lighter yellow than normal. The sugar reduction worked, it doesn’t taste sweet now. However, the alcohol is much more apparent in the flavor now. A one cup reduction may have been too much. The next time I’ll try a 1/2 cup reduction. The flavor seems lighter with less sugar, it has some redeeming qualities there but overall it’s just too harsh. It will take a long time in the cellar to make this batch smooth.