Limoncello – Round 3 a/k/a It’s Done!

If you’ve followed my limoncello posts, you know that I started making homemade limoncello (Round 1) in mid-July.  About 1½ months later, I filtered the lemon peels out of the alcohol and added the sugar-water mixture known as simple syrup (Round 2.)  Now, after the limoncello rested in a cool, dark corner for another 1½ months, I am ready to bottle it.

Barb of Creative Culinary is so right (see her comment on the first post), the wait time between starting limoncello and bottling the finished liqueur is a killer.  Many times I was tempted to short circuit this incredibly long process.  I even found support for cutting it short among the many limoncello recipes I consulted.  But ultimately, I remained patient, heeding advice from several reputable sources, including Barb, that the longer wait times yield a better, more mellow liqueur.

I did research on how to clean the individual bottles.  Both Barb and Cathy Barrow (Mrs. Wheelbarrow), counseled that running them through a dishwasher cycle is enough.  That sounded sensible to me, given that I was bottling alcohol, not canning preserves.  So I put the bottles through the dishwasher on the hottest wash cycle with a heated dry.  

Filtering the limoncello from the container into my large coffee pot turned out to be the best way to get it into the funnel and then the bottles, because the pot has a spout while the large container does not.  I doubt that the mixture needed the additional filtering, but it saved me from the tedious process of ladling the liqueur from the container into the funnel.

The only step left is to chill the limoncello, as it is best served cold.  Although I can’t justify more than a sip right now (in the early afternoon), I couldn't resist chilling a tiny amount in a shot glass.  Smooth and lemony, it went down easy and made me yearn for more. 

Now all that's left is to figure out what to do with my treasure trove of limoncello-filled bottles.