So for copyright purposes I have to have a long story about why my limoncello is so different from everyone else’s limoncello. In food writing apparently in order to copyright a recipe, people tend to follow an informal standard that you need to make at least three changes before you can claim credit for a recipe. There’s like 200+ recipes for limoncello online, for US copyright law a collection of recipes, as in a cookbook, can be protected. That protection is stronger if the author adds original literary commentary and uses creativity in the selection of recipes. Merely listing ingredients, however, is likely not enough (source). So, I’m going with the copyright angle on this because I’m super lazy, this is also why when you look online for recipes there’s a super long introduction before getting to the actual recipes. When Jon and I wrote our little Southwestern Recipes publication, the introduction at the beginning was apparently enough to copyright the whole thing, so that’s pretty neat! Anyway, I’ll explain what this post is in gratuitous detail so as to solicit a copyright of some kind.
The first time I made limoncello was during COVID lockdown in like early spring of 2021. Jon had started brewing beer with his buddy Brad, so I wanted to make some kind of liqueur – I settled on trying to make limoncello (lemon), arancello (orange), and pompelmocello (grapefruit). I took on too much all at once and I probably sliced my fingers numerous times in getting the rinds off of all those lemons, oranges, and grapefruit… by hand… with a crappy knife. I have learned my lesson! Using a really good citrus peeler is the way to go (like this one). Anyway, I did not calculate ratios correctly and I basically made way-over proofed cellos. They tasted alright, but I didn’t take great care with my ingredients the first time, tbh.
So, after that nonsense, I decided not to try making cellos again for a while and focused on berry syrups for additives into Jon’s beers; thus the creation of the Hundred Acre Woods Wheat Series began. These beers consisted of: Blueberry Heffalump (a blueberry syrup added to a standard Hefeweizen beer), Booberry Woozles (raspberry, strawberry, and blueberry syrups), Eeyore’s LunaH-Weiss (a gluten-free hefe, no syrups added), Pooh’s Honey Hefe (peach syrup with honey), Kanga’s Daiquiri (coconut cream with strawberry syrup), and Hundred Acre Hefe (lavender, honey, and saskatoon berry syrup – one of our wedding beers). Anyway, I spent a lot of time making syrups for beer, along with jams and cocktails.
Why make cellos again? I went to an Ales for Females event at Lefthand Brewing in March 2023 and the speakers were two local bartenders/distillers. At the end of the cocktail tasting and presentation, they went around chatting with people in the room. I mentioned I had made limoncellos in the past. Well, apparently they were looking for a recipe. So, that’s what this is – my experiment to figure out a good limoncello recipe and to really determine if Meyer lemons are worth the money.
So the table above shows my calculations in a Google sheet to determine the volume ratios between simple syrup and lemon extract (lemon peels + grain alcohol in sealed mason jar for 4 weeks). I was clearly aiming for 30-34% alcohol, this is pretty standard for limoncello (~24-34%). I hit the mark, all my cellos ended up at 31-33% woohoo! Also, the equation is simple:
100%*{[(proof/2)*(vol extract)] / [(vol extract) + (vol syrup)]} = limoncello alcohol %
Ok, so what did we do and what’s in the above table? We did basic cheap AF lemons from King Soopers, organic lemons from Sprouts, and Meyer lemons from Sprouts. I’ll tabulate the exact weights of lemon peel to alcohol in mason jar later on (I have to find my notebook and its been about a year since I’ve touched this). We ran everything on our kitchen scale and zero’d for mason jar masses, so we have the data, but for now we’ll say all the 500mL jars were about 2/3 full of packed peels, so about 8-10 lemons used per jar, less for the GMO Sooper lemons ~6. I also tried a two different types of sugar in this experiment for making the cellos. I used the classic pink bag granulated sugar and some nice organic cane sugar from Whole Foods to make the simple syrups. I did the usual 1:1 water:sugar volume ratios to make my simple syrups.
Results
Use Organic Meyer lemons. Use Organic cane sugar.
Be sure you brush and warm wash the crap out of the lemons, if there’s any wax residue you want to get as much of it off as you possibly can. Use the good citrus peeler, avoid getting the pith (the white stuff on the peel) in with your alcohol. Use the highest proof grain alcohol you can find (we used a local Colorado brand that was 192 proof, Sno? Looks like you can’t find it online). If you don’t use a well-filtered Colorado brand, consider running your Everclear through a Brita. Aim for a 32-33% proof. Chill the cello before serving, serve in a chilled aperitif glass. Sugared rim optional.