Help – I Can’t Find Bottles for my Limoncello
I’ve been searching everywhere and I haven’t been able to find appropriate bottles for storing my limoncello. The bottles in the liquor store are square with a screw cap and hold about 1/2 a liter. Of course I have the vodka bottles I used to make the liqueur, but they are not attractive and they are a bit too large to store in the freezer.
I’ve checked in the home stores (Linen & Things, etc), the dollar stores, Target, Pier 1, and on eBay. I live on the east coast, just outside Philadelphia. Ikea had some bottles with the flip lids like a Grolsch beer, but they are very difficult to open at room temperature, I can’t imagine what it would be like coming out of the freezer.
Does anyone have a suggestion?
Taste Your Wine Any Time
First off, I ALWAYS taste my juice before I begin a batch of homemade wine. I want to know what my blueberry juice or blackberry juice tastes like before I add the yeast. I want to know if it is sweet, tart, and if it has lots of flavor or only a little flavor. Good tasting wine should start out as good tasting juice.
A winemaking buddy once told me about a festival where they drink the wine when it’s half-done fermenting. The alcohol level is low, the wine is still sweet, and there is a slight carbonation to the drink. In Austria, they call it sturm.
I had never heard of this idea and at first it seemed wrong. After all, it’s not wine yet. I decided to try it, and I must say, it was rather good. Go take a small glass of strum from your fermenter when the specific gravity is around 1.025 and let me know what you think.
I found a link that describes several of these festivals in different countries.
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/the-harvest-party-circuit
If any of you have been to one of these festivals, I would love to hear all about it.
My First Batch of Limoncello
1/13/08 - Today I began my first batch of limoncello. I didn’t have a jar big enough to make a full batch, so I split it into two one-quart mason jars. Each jar has a bottle of Leeds Vodka ($4.99 for 750 ml) and the peels of 7 or 8 nice fragrant lemons.
The potato peeler was definitely the way to go. It took no more than 10 minutes to peel 15 lemons.
What do you do with 15 naked lemons?
1/14/08 – The liquid already has a really cool lemon yellow color. Three months is going to be a long time to wait for this stuff.
1/19/08 – The skins are just starting to turn white. I give it a shake every day or so. The color is almost electric. It’s pretty obvious already that a single batch just isn’t going to cut it.
1/20/08 – We made lemon marmalade with some of the naked lemons and my wife made a couple of batches of lemon squares.
2/16/08 – I shake the jars every couple of days. They are a great color and the rinds are starting to turn rather white. How has this been only a month? I want to try some NOW!
7/4/09 – Yeah, big time gap, but here’s what you’ve been waiting for. After pouring off the liquid and sweetening it (I have no idea how much sugar I used, apparently I forgot to write it down), I set it aside for a while. Last week my friend Mike came over and I took it out of the freezer for him to try. Two thumbs up. We were over his house last night, I brought him a bottle (340ml vinegar bottles from the 89 cent store). We had some before dinner, and the gang almost polished off the whole bottle after dinner. A lot more thumbs up.
Limoncello … soon
Lemons were 4 for $1, but they were ugly. Since the liqueur is made from the zest, I want the really good looking lemons. I’ll have to keep shopping.
I stopped today at a produce market. The lemons were 5 for $2, they were pretty, but they had no smell. More shopping.
Nikolai Vodka was around $7 for 1.5 liters of 80 proof in the PA state store. I’m going to check on NJ this weekend. They had two brands of Limoncello from Italy. Both brands were $20 for about .75 liter and they stated they were 36% alcohol (72 proof).
