LimoncelloQuest

A new post, can you believe it?! Many apologies for my sloth, friends. I have a few reviews collected but I haven’t been posting them in a timely fashion at all. I’ve been busy working on other sites, but it’s no excuse!

My latest idea was to test a few of the recipes out on the web that are very popular and see how they compare to my own. I started with a recipe on the Food Network by Giada De Laurentiis. Check it out and you’ll see all the specs that I usually post here. Since the recipe doesn’t specify, I employed my own best practices and used organic lemons and 100-proof vodka.

I’m testing a few things here. One is just what Giada’s recipe tastes like versus my own. A second is peeling versus zesting. She recommends peeling and I usually zest. A third is the infusion time, she recommends 4 days and I usually do a minimum of 30 days.

Without further ado, here are the results. The peeling was a painful process. I’m meticulous about not getting any pith and you have to be serious samurai to peel lemons quickly without getting any pith. It took me a long time. There are people who claim peeling is the ONLY way to make limoncello because it produces a product with more flavor and clarity. I’ll concede the clarity point. Zesting produces a much cloudier limoncello. If you peel you’ll get a nice clear limoncello right away. It’s also easier to filter. However, I don’t think it positively impacts the lemon flavor you get and if you let zested limoncello rest long enough, it becomes clear eventually.

The finished limoncello had a nice medium yellow color, but the aroma was weak and it was hard to detect the lemon scent. The flavor was also pretty weak, it tasted like a lemon drop but had a character more akin to simple syrup than limoncello. It was extremely smooth with no real alcohol heat. I would describe this as limoncello for those who don’t really like alcohol. It had a very sweet, easy-to-like flavor so I understand why the recipe is popular (nothing to do with Giada I’m sure…). I prefer a stronger lemon character and a stronger liquor in general. Those are certainly preferences though.

In all, this is a good recipe for someone wanting to give limoncello as a gift. You can make it quickly vs. my recipe and it produces a clear, attractive limoncello that most people who don’t usually drink limoncello may like. It’s not a batch that I would personally be proud of but it’s definitely interesting that you can make a semi-decent limoncello in 4 days.

Just a quick update to say that I’m letting these calculators out of beta. Some of you have seen them already if you’re on my email list but now they are available as a regular site feature in the right hand navigation bar. If you can think of other calculators that might be useful, let me know. Here they are:

Limoncello Calculators

Just wanted to let everyone know that I finally posted a review of Danny DeVito’s Limoncello. I also made a couple site upgrades. I changed the text links (in the site navigation) from the difficult-to-read yellow to green and made some other behind-the-scenes upgrades.

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I’ve heard that Meyer lemons are a better approximation of the lemons used in Sorrento than normal lemons so I tried a batch. They are not organic (not easy to get organic ones here) but I scrubbed them well and used fruit wash.

The flavor is…well…different. So much so that it doesn’t taste like limoncello to me. It’s as different from what I consider normal limoncello as batches made with lime or orange zest. It doesn’t taste like those other batches, but it’s equidistant from the flavor of limoncello. The aroma is very subtle and the flavor is somewhat more bitter. It sort of tastes like candied citrus zest, both sweet and bitter.

It is a tasty batch but having never been to the Amalfi region of Italy myself, I’m entirely unqualified to say whether it tastes more authentic. I don’t like it as much as my normal limoncello though because it’s not as brightly flavored.

Liquor: One bottle of 151 Proof Everclear
Liquor filtration: 5x
Lemons: 12 Meyer lemons scrubbed with Environne fruit wash
Days peels and liquor rested: 83
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 1.75, Cups Water: 2.5
Final filtration: 5x

Limoncello with Meyer Lemons - Batch #15

I changed a few things on this batch but only one that I think makes a big difference. In this batch I used distilled water instead of tap water. We have a WaterWise distiller that I used for this experiment but you can get cheap distilled water at any grocery store. And I recommend doing that because this is a VERY good batch.

The aroma is very clean and crisp. The flavor is also very clean and lemony. I noticed some film on the inside of the bottle but much less than in other batches. This is perhaps the purest tasting batch I’ve ever made. There are no detectable off flavors and it’s a batch I imagine the Italians would love. It needs some time to sit, there’s a heavy dose of heat on the finish but this could prove to be my best batch ever. Two other minor changes to help with the film buildup were washing the lemons with Environne fruit wash before zesting and in the final filtration I added an extra filtering.

Liquor: One bottle of 151 Proof Everclear
Liquor filtration: 5x
Lemons: 12 organic lemons scrubbed with Environne fruit wash
Days peels and liquor rested: 84
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 1.75, Cups Water: 2.5
Final filtration: 5x

I’ve gotten numerous questions on exactly how much zest I use in a typical batch of Limoncello. I’ve also had some very insightful comments regarding how I measure my ingredients. Apparently one “cup” of water isn’t the same amount in the U.S. as in other countries. Being American, this hadn’t really occurred to me but it’s a good point.

So my first LimoncelloQuest acquisition was a food scale! Yes, very exciting. The first thing I did with this scale was measure the amount of zest I use in a typical batch. I just started a new batch with 12 organic lemons. I zested them with the microplane grater yesterday and weighed the resulting zest. The zest weighed in at 46 grams. The lemons were a little on the small side so I bet I often use more like 50 grams but that should give you a good idea of what I typically use to make a batch.

I should also mention that a “batch” for me these days is half of what is described in my standard recipe, using one 750ml bottle of Everclear rather than two bottles. This is primarily to conserve Everclear and get more tests in. Still, this 12 lemon batch I just started contains significantly more zest than I used to use in the past. I may update my standard recipe because I just prefer a LOT of lemon flavor these days.

I just added a brand new section to the site for commercial limoncello reviews. I kicked it off with five widely available brands of limoncello and I summarized them on one graph so you can easily see the differences. I plan to add more in the near future, feel free to make suggestions!

This batch was hard to rate on my flavor graph because it embodies two distinctly different characteristics. I finally made the decision you see below but it actually starts sweet and smooth and then as the flavor matures on the palate it gets more rough and a little tart.

I think many hard core limoncello enthusiasts would say that this is how it’s supposed to be and I enjoy this batch myself. It’s mellow and then you get the heat of a good limoncello. The mint adds a little something, you wouldn’t necessarily detect it but it does add a certain character to the batch. There are different styles of limoncello, but as authentic styles go I like this batch a lot.

Liquor: One bottle of 151 Proof Everclear
Liquor filtration: 5x
Lemons: 14 scrubbed organic lemons plus one mint leaf torn in half
Days peels and liquor rested: 36
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 1.75, Cups Water: 2.5
Final filtration: 4x

Limoncello - Batch #13

I should have posted this review while it was still summertime but better late than never I guess. This is actually batch #12 for those who follow along. I wanted to get fancy and do a batch that tasted like a Mojito.

Here’s the recipe I used:

Liquor: One bottle of 151 Proof Everclear
Liquor filtration: 5x
Lemons: 14 scrubbed organic limes plus one mint leaf torn in half
Days peels and liquor rested: 36
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 1.75, Cups Water: 2.5
Final filtration: 4x

There were a few things wrong with this attempt. The first is pretty obvious, lime zest doesn’t taste like lime flesh. So unless I use lime juice in the future I don’t think the finished product will really taste like Mojito. I also used far too little mint, it was barely detectable in the flavor.

Here were my tasting notes:
Has the typical lime-cello green color and the texture is extra dense. Tastes like a sweet batch of lime-cello, you can hardly detect the lime that would make it mojito-like. There’s a hint of mint on the finish but this doesn’t taste like a mojito.

Despite the fact that it didn’t turn out as I’d initially hoped, this was a tasty batch. I may repeat it and add 10 mint leaves instead of one next time.

I’ve heard that the secret to great limoncello is to add the zest of one lime to the lemon zest before infusion. So I gave this a try to see if it adds anything. The result had a nice milky white color out of the freezer, I don’t usually get that effect but I doubt it had to do with the lime. It may be the temperature of the freezer.

The lime did exert a flavor in the finished product, it’s pretty subtle but definitely a mild lime zest flavor (not to be confused with an actual lime flavor). It has a few other off flavors, possibly because the lime wasn’t organic, and it’s a little tiny bit harsh. The lime zest adds a certain something but I don’t think it’s a real improvement so I’m declaring that adding the zest of one lime isn’t the secret to great limoncello. Here’s the breakdown:

Liquor: One bottle of 151 Proof Everclear
Liquor filtration: 5x
Lemons: 12 scrubbed Organic lemons plus the zest of one lime
Days peels and liquor rested: 56
Simple Syrup – Cups Sugar: 1.75, Cups Water: 2.5
Final filtration: 4x