Chillin' in the snow with Limoncillo

Meyer lemons from Costco come in 4 pound bags - and they are beautiful and fresh when you can get them. Last month, I decided to make homemade limoncillo using our own Canelli Wildflower Lane honey. 


It's going to be a fun summer of cocktails - but perhaps a snow cone today would be fun!

Last month, I cut the lemons into quarters and removed any seeds that were obvious. I then packed them into a large glass jar and covered them with Sky vodka. We taped up the jar (it had a lid that didn't seal) and let it sit in the cellar among the wine bottles for four weeks. Last night we brought up the lemons and I knew I had to finish the project this morning - I thought it was going to be a bit more difficult than it was.

Essentially, I drained the vodka from the lemons and then put the lemons in a pot with 4 cups water and 4 cups raw sugar and 2 cups of our delicious honey.

I let them simmer for a few minutes and mashed them down, extracting the juice. I then drained the lemons into a colander and let them cool, straining the syrup of all pulp and seeds. When the syrup was very cool, I mixed it up with the lemon-vodka (about 2-1 syrup to vodka) and used a funnel to store the limoncillo in several bottles with covers and put them in the frig.

I then removed the pulp from the strained lemons and placed it in a pot with about 2 cups of water and simmered it for 10 minutes to get the flavor from the pulp. I added that to 4 cups of water and 4 cups of table sugar and 2 cups of raw sugar.

 I sliced all the peels into thin slices for garnish in a drink and added them to the water/sugar simmering on the stove. I simmered them until they were all translucent. I ended up with about 12 ounces of slivers covered with syrup and 12 ounces of extra simple syrup.

We decided the strong Meyer lemon flavor makes this a perfect limoncillo to mix in cocktails. LimoncilloQuest is a great site for tons of recipes.