There are multiple ways of making liqueurs. When you buy a bottle in a store, the alcohol base is usually distilled industrially. Flavours are added through infusion, maceration, or sometimes re-distillation with botanicals. There are options to get your own small distiller at home. Yet, to make liters upon liters, you would need a pretty decent sized one. But fear not, there are other alternatives to industrial sized distillation. To be honest, I have never distilled anything myself. I always preferred the alternative methods. Perhaps in a bar environment, these are more on hand. So let`s start. I will walk you through the different methods. Then, I will suggest which method is better suited for what you want to create.
There is one very important thing, before we start. Where is the flavour in a fruit. When you eat a fruit you would notice the taste of its juice, of its flesh. Sweet fructose mixed with the fruits unique taste. Most fruits you will peel before you eat it, for example an orange. No one is eating the orange peels, because its bitter, its unpleasant, its concentrated and strong. But, this is what we want, you want to extract the oils from the peels, you don`t want the fleshy part or anything else cause you just won`t get enough of the flavours. I would suggest only in the case of berries you use the fruit itself, it would take an eternity to peel a raspberry, so berries are to be crushed as they are, mixing the juice and the flesh, simply because there is no alternative in their case.
Cold maceration. This is your traditional way of making a limoncello. Just ask any nonna across Italy, they`ve been making this staple of all cellos for a really long time. In fact the roots of the limoncello go all the way back to the 11th Century (widespread claims that can’t be verified), mainly at the Amalfi Coast, where monks where using lemons for all sort of medicines via infusions., and much later in the 17th-18th century the wealthy were serving up lemon-based liqueurs. The modern form of limoncello, however, was popularized in the late 19th and early 20th century in Capri, Amalfi, and Sorrento.
The idea of cold maceration is that we peel the fruits, in this instance the lemons, the more skin and less pith (the bitter white part of the inside of the skin) we manage to peel off, the better. We mix it in strong alcohol, you can use from 95% strong polish spirytus to 40% vodka. The choice is up to you based on what taste you want your end product to be and how impatient you are. The stronger 95% alcohol is neutral in taste and the stronger alcohol will start eating at the peel much faster then the weaker spirits. And the vodka (or any spirit of your choice) will add its own taste to our limoncello. We put it in a tightly sealed container, like a kilner jar, or anything that we can seal off, and leave it for a certain amount of time. Now let`s say we are using 95% strong neutral alcohol, generally speaking my recommendation is to leave the lemon peels soaking for at least 2 weeks, after 2 weeks the alcohol will start to eat the white pith as well, making our concoction more bitter then we want it to be. This shouldn’t be an issue with let`s say apples, or berries, which have no white pith. Also, some Italians are telling me that they are leaving the lemons in the alcohol for a whole month! On the bar, during an emergency (we ran out of limoncellos) I made more than once had to process limoncello that was only 4 days old. Through be told, I think you can get away with it if you are using 95% alcohol. After when it’s done, you mix it with water and sugar. You can count out the ABV of what you want to achieve with a simple formula. And your limoncello is done through the method of cold maceration.
Warm maceration, is a faster approach to all of this. Instead of leaving the peeled fruit in a jar for weeks, warm maceration can bring this whole process down to hours. Although this is the method that I least recommend. Alcohol boils at around 78°C. But to keep it safe we shouldn’t go higher then 50-60°C. We can make mix in the peels with the alcohol in a pan, and all we need to do is to keep the temperature steady, which is actually not as easy, it depends on the pans material, its thickness, on the stove you are using, there are just too many details to think about to keep everything steady.
Sous-vide, is probably my favourite method of all, it`s fast, it`s dependable and it looks interesting to the guests, so it is always a conversation piece. If you do not know what a sous-vide is, then let me introduce you to your new best friend in the kitchen, whether you will use it for drinks or food, you will always, every time have a perfect, consistent result. Basically this method is about putting our drink in a sealed container under water, where a machine will keep the temperature steady for the necessary time. With this method you can make a limoncello in 3 hours instead of 2 weeks, and it will always be a dependable method. Some people argue that cold maceration is still better, I argue that they are either traditionalists, or maybe more experimentation is needed and extend those 3 hours (which create a slightly cooked taste). But the idea behind sous-vide is, that the maceration is kept at a steady temperature which helps the alcohol extract the oils from the peels on a more consistent level. Some liqueurs I prefer this way, to be truthful, we could make all of the recipes using the sous-vide method, well, other than the oleo saccharums, that is…
Oleo-Saccharum, is basically the extraction of oils from fruit peels via sugar osmosis. I would say this way you can get the most flavours. I always suggest to use equal amount of sugar and peels in weight, but we can experiment with different ratios as well. And the final yield is much smaller compared to the other methods. This way, however we only need around 8-12 hours. After this time you will end up with a sludgy substance, which you can add alcohol to it, (I would personally recommend regular vodka, rum or tequila instead of the spirytus) and filter out the smaller bits through a coffee filter, muslin cloth, or anything else that is fine enough for your needs.
How to count the ABV% of your liqueur?
If I want to calculate the ABV, with lets say 1 Liter 95% spirytus, and I want to bring it down to 32%, how would I do it?
We use this simple formula:
C1×V1=C2×V2
C1 = starting ABV (95%)
V1 = starting volume (1 L = 1000 ml)
C2 = target ABV (32%)
V2 = final total volume (alcohol + added water)
Step 1: Put in the values, as:
95×1000=32xV2
95000=32xV2
Step 2: Solve the V2:
V2=95000/32
V2 = 2968.75ml
Step 3: How much water we need?:
Water=V2-V1
2968.75-1000=1968.75ml
So, if we want to achieve a nice smooth 32% ABV with our drink we would need 1967ml of water, and final yield of our liqueur will be around 3 litres.