Limonchello + six weeks

Well today I filter and bottle my concoction. Now, as I said at the start, I'm mixing and matching recipes I found on the web to come up with the recipe I'm using for this batch. I have left the lemon peel in the concoction after adding the syrup two weeks ago. The first step then was to pour the concoction trough a metal strainer to remove the peel. The remaining liquid was then filtered through coffee filters to remove whatever remaining sediment I could. That did clog up the filters and the gallon or so of liquid required some 10 filters, or more. The filtered liquid was finally poured into bottles to go back in the basement for another week or two.

The color was darker than I expected limoncello to be. Perhaps leaving the peel in the alcohol plus syrup was not such a good idea. Also, the taste, while good, was not fantastic. (First batch, what can I expect). I did not have quite as strong a lemon flavor as I expected. Perhaps, I need to steep the peel longer before adding the syrup.

On the suggestion of my lovely wife Kate, I may try something unorthodox with one of the bottles that this brew will produce. I plan to add a little alcohol and a small additional amount of syrup to the liquid I have produced. The plan is to lighten the color but retain the character of the liquor. Possibly a disaster, but I'll still have three bottles done the standard way.

One bottle was going to be short anyway so that's the experimental. I added about 200 ml of alcohol and I've prepared about 200 ml of syrup. Once the syrup cools I will add it to the bottle and store them all in the basement for another two weeks.

Well everything is all packed up. The special bottle is marked with a blue label.