Letourneau’s Limoncello
It seems like a year ago but it was only last week that I took my third crack at making limoncello. When life gives you lemons…
Life is short, so I opted to use lemon zest and a sous vide cook to accelerate the process. we are blessed with tons of organic lemons in our Rancho Mirage backyard. I combined a sous vide style recipe from DadCooksDinner with critical information from the informative Limoncelloquest website.
Letourneau’s Limoncello #3
Zest of 23 lemons
1.75 litres Of 120 proof (60% ABV) Everclear
720 ml water
306 g sugar
I was aiming for a 37% end product so I used the Limoncello Alcohol Proof/Percentage Calculator for guidance.
I poured the Everclear over the lemon zest in a large mason jar and put it in a 133F water bath for 2.5 hours. I combined the water and sugar over high heat to make simple syrup. I filtered the lemon mixture using a coffee filter.
Collecting the lemon zest.
Zesting the lemons is time consuming. The best tool for zesting is a microplane zester. Other shapes were not as effective.
Lots of zested lemons. Don’t zest the white pith!
Everclear over lemon zest is the essence of making limoncello.
Swing top bottles ready for gifting.
A stronger less sweetened limoncello. I found this version to be clean and smooth.
I only had a glass of this over ice right after I made it. Normally limoncello is sticky sweet. This version was cleaner tasting and very smooth. Deliciously dangerous.
As a Canadian visitor to the USA, there was an urgent call to come home which we eventually heeded. During stressful times it is important to have things to look forward to and one of them for me will be sharing a glass of this limoncello with friends down the road.
Limoncello #1 was pretty close to the above method but without filtering and and ABV closer to 30%.
Limoncello #2 is where I foolishly decided to use lemon juice instead of water as the simple syrup liquid. I didn’t think this through, probably because I rarely make lemonade. This batch was harsh so I promptly doubled the sugar content. It is now in the “mixer” category. More sugar was the opposite of what I was going for but it led me to the amazing Letourneau’s Limoncello #3.
I might try a double pass at filtering next time just to see but if I ever get through what I’ve already made, I’ll be going back to this recipe. Some day when I become more patient I might skip the sous vide component and do a conventional version.