Wow, thank you for providing so much detail @cascode ! I especially appreciate the detail about how to make sure you get as much oil as possible without getting the pith. I look forward to losing track of it in my fridge after I make some and re-discovering it a year later! I actually recently found that I had some preserved lemons in my fridge from about a year ago and they had likewise improved substantially :)

@ContemplativeFox @Jan-Case This is my recipe for 1 litre. Take 6 large lemons, preferably organic and unwaxed. Wash them thoroughly under warm water, rubbing the skin all over with your hands or scrubbing *gently* with a brush. If you smell lemon oil strongly when doing this the water may be too hot or you are scrubbing too hard and losing oil. Peel the lemons - this is the tricky bit because you only want peel and zero white pith. Use a sharp paring knife and make the peel as thin as possible. If you see any white underneath, it is too thick and you should carefully cut the pith away. If you feel oil or moisture on your hands you are compressing the skin too much and losing oil. Some people use fruit peelers but they always remove too much pith that you have to trim away. I tried a few times to use a bar zester and it does avoid the pith, but you lose about half the essential oils because it compresses the skin far too much. I have heard of people using microplanes to grate off the zest, but I have not tried it. Don’t waste the lemons – I juice them and then freeze the juice into icecubes. Put the pile of peel or zest into a 1 litre preserving jar and pour in 500ml of neutral alcohol. Some people recommend high-proof neutral spirit like Everclear but in many countries you can’t buy it. I use Absolut vodka which is 40%. The extraction takes a little longer with vodka and it does not pull out quite as much oil as Everclear, but the results are still very similar. Seal the jar, give it a shake and you should immediately see the alcohol take on a yellowish tinge. Put the jar in a dark place (this is important! Light will oxidise the infusion) and give it a shake at least once a day. The infusion will take about 1-2 weeks with Everclear and about 3-4 weeks with vodka. You will notice over time the yellow peel turns an off-white colour. When it looks like an old man’s toenails, it’s done 😊 Strain the infusion into a container. If you use a mesh strainer it will let many small particles and the maximum amount of oil through, which will cause the infusion to louch strongly in the final step and produce a cloudy, creamy looking liqueur. If you filter through muslin the liqueur will be clearer. If you strain through several layers of muslin or a coffee filter the final liqueur will be crystal clear and look a bit like Cointreau, however it will have a much milder flavour. Prepare a simple syrup by combining 300ml of water with 200g of sugar in a saucepan. Heat gently and stir until the sugar is dissolved. At this point there are also two options. You can let the syrup cool just a little, or you can cool it down to room temperature. Add the infusion to the syrup - a hot syrup will cause some clouding, which you may or may not desire. You should now have a little under 1 litre of limoncello. If you used 40% abv vodka the strength will be around 20%, and it will have a sweetness which is right for most palates. To adjust the sweetness, vary the amount of sugar to water in the syrup, but keep the total amount as 500 g in weight (1 ml = 1 g). Put the liqueur into sealable bottles (I put a batch into 4 x 250ml swing-top bottles) and “age” for at least a week. It will become smoother and more integrated over time. and can be stored out of the fridge for a long time. One of the best bottles I’ve had was one I forgot about for over a year and it was excellent, although the flavour had become quite subtle. You can drink it at room temperature, but most people like it chilled from the fridge or kept in the freezer. If freezing it make sure the batch has a high alcohol content – at least 25%. Finally, experiment with the recipe! Some people like to add lemon juice before bottling. This gives a fresher, more lemonade-like flavour, and if it’s very sweet and has a heavy louche it can even taste like lemon curd. You can also add spices to the infusion (cloves, cinnamon quills, cardamom pods etc.) but this is more often done with arancello (orange cello).

I figured that might be your answer @cascode :) If you're willing to share your recipe, I'd love to give it a try! I'll also pick up some Pallini or Luxardo sometime so I have a good benchmark to compare against

@cascode Ahh, Limoncello. A few years ago I traveled the west coast of Italy starting in Rome all the down to Salerno along the Amalfi coast. And Limencello is also regional there so I have quite some fond memories of it. Especially because when we where there in early March the lemon harvest had just started. But as Cascode proved - it is best when self made. I never have, but every Limoncello I bought afterwards wasn’t as good as the stuff we got in restaurants there. That is because most of them make their own Limoncello with their own (probably family inherited) recipes. I have a bottle of Villa Massa Limoncello here at the moment which is from Sorrento (where we stayed too back in 2014) and this one is of the sweetest I had but still kinda the closest to what we got back there. But yeah it brings back memories. Would you mind sharing your recipe? Because in spring we can buy organic Italian lemons here and I would really like to give it a try.

Pellini and Luxardo are very nice, and the Australian Manly Spirits is pretty good too, but I seldom buy "good" limoncello. I make a batch several times a year so I usually only buy commercial limoncello when I see a new brand and want to compare it with mine. It's very easy to make, and if you do it properly I guarantee you will get results superior to anything you can buy in a shop. Anything with an oily peel can make a "cello", and the recipes are all very similar. Making your own liqueurs and bar syrups is very satisfying.

Great analysis. Do you have a limoncello you'd recommend? Any other types of cellos that are worth trying?