The story really begins last year when Kathe and her husband Bill took a trip to Italy. The focus was not art, history or architecture but it was food. They had cooking classes, they ate and they drank.This tea towel is a souvenir of their adventure. When they arrived back in Hawaii, Kathe set out on a Limoncello Mission. She searched for limoncello recipes both in cookbooks and on the web. She used her selected recipe and made her first batch for the 2009 holiday season. The second batch begins today.
Kathe takes the lemon zest, that came from the growing grounds at the lanikai green house, and puts them in a large glass jar with a tight fitting lid.
This jar was made for ice tea and has a handy dispenser that will be useful in a few months when the completed limoncello is put in small bottles. The zest from the 20 lemons nearly fills the jar.
This is the part where you have to make sure that you extinguish all open flames. Everclear grain alcohol is made by Luxco. For this recipe Kathe uses 151 proof but is is available in 190 proof. It appears that in Hawaii the strongest proof available is the 151 proof. It does the trick.
The recipe calls for one 750 ml bottle each of Everclear and vodka. But for this batch Kathe used one full bottle of Everclear and for the second bottle a mix of leftover Everclear and vodka. This batch should pack a bit more punch! 
After Kathe gives the jar a good shake, the waiting process begins. From her research Kathe has found that the wait should be a minimum if one week but the longer the zest bathes in the alcohol the better the flavor.
This batch of lemon zest will get a four month bath. I brought the jar back to the lanikai green house and will put it in our cellar. I will give it a shake every once in a while. When Kathe returns to Hawaii in few months she will start the next step in the process: Limoncello - How Sweet It Is.
