Homemade Limoncello

I love all things lemon.  I've mentioned before that my parents have a prolific lemon tree (here's a recipe for delicious lemon sorbet), so they're regularly giving us big bags of lemons. I usually freeze both the juice and the zest.  This time, I used the vegetable peeler to remove the zest in big strips before juicing the lemons.

I cleaned a mason jar, then added the strips of lemon zest and some cheap vodka.  I covered the top with plastic wrap and let it sit. 

 

After five days, the vodka had taken on a yellowish tinge.  

 

I strained out the zest, then made a simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar).  I added the simple syrup to the lemon-infused vodka, then let that sit for a day.  (Exact measurements aren't necessary, but if you want to follow a recipe, try this one.)  Store the limoncello in the freezer.

I brought my homemade limoncello to our Labor Day get-together, where the adults sipped it while playing Apples to Apples (one of my favorite games, by the way).  Delicious!

 

By random coincidence, we were given a bottle of limoncello two days later!  Steve was gone on a business trip, so I waited until he got home, and poured a side-by-side tasting of my homemade limoncello and the commercial one.  

(Commercial on the left; mine on the right)

I preferred mine.  It was less harsh, sweeter, and smoother.  But I knew which was which. Perhaps I was biased toward my own.  But Steve didn't know which was which, and he preferred mine for the same reasons.  He described the commercial one as medicinal.  

Yet another case where homemade is better!