Nona's Liqueur #3

This is a simple but tasty drink that reminds me of something Italian grandmothers might make. It uses leftover skins and husks of citrus. It's quite pleasant on its own over an ice cube, and should make a bright spritz cocktail. It's easy, it just takes patience for the infusion.

We accidentally discovered a technique to make a citrus liqueur then made it intentionally. Subsequently, we simplified by collecting citrus skins from our fresh-squeezed orange juice, lemon and lime husks from cocktails, etc, and infusing clean-tasting vodka.  I'm repeating that here, with husks from our little lemon tree, skins from mandarin oranges, and so on. I expect to adjust based on what we have, and what tastes good. 

 12    Lemon husks (with or without zest, whatever we have)
  ?    Mandarin skins
  8    Lime husks
  2    Bay leaves
 1+ L  Vodka, clean tasting; I used Stroika from our supermarket
250 g  Palm Sugar

Stuff a 2L flip top jar with as much of the citrus peels as you can fit, add the Bay, then fill to the top with Vodka.

Let sit a month, turning occasionally.

Strain through coarse sieve. Squeeze the remaining pulp in your hands to extract a lot more infused Vodka.

Filter all the liquid through a fine mesh; I used a plastic cone coffee filter, but you could use a paper filter or fancy chinois.  I ended up with 1.3 Liters of flavored Vodka.

For my Vermut, I make a caramel, and may do so next time but I had Palm Sugar lying around so I used that since it already has a dark flavor reminiscent of caramel. For that caramel, I used 22% by weight of sugar to the liquid, and I had almost enough Palm Sugar, so I just used what I had.  Add the Palm Sugar, cover, and let sit until dissolved. 

Store in bottles for easy drinking, over ice, with a splash of sparkling water, perhaps even some cava.

This batch had an appealing citrus aroma. The sweetness was fine: not to austere nor too sticky. The  bitterness of the pith offset balanced the sweetness and gave it an amaro edge.

I think using plain white sugar would be a bit insipid, so next time might use caramelized sugar if I don't have palm sugar.

We've been enjoying Nona Spritz: 2 to 4 to 1 of Nona's Liqueur, Cava, sparkling water -- with ice.

Nona Spritz: very refreshing

2025-07-16 - 2025-08-16 Nona's Liquour #4

That was so good, we should always have it around the house. This time, I didn't use the Bay Leaf and used caramelized Sugar.

  1 Kg  Citrus husks (lemon, lime, orange)

  1 L   Vodka (clean tasting like Stroika)

250 g   White Sugar

 75 g   Water

Soak the Citrus husks completely covered in the Vodka for a month; I used a 2 L bail-top jar.

Squeeze, strain, and filter: I got 1.4 L of aromatic liquid.

Put the Sugar in a small sauce pan, add the Water, and bring to a boil;

don't stir, just let it reach a golden state at 188C/370F, then pour it onto a nonstick sheet to cool.

Roll it up or break it into pieces and place in the filtered liquor; let it dissolve.

Swirl to combine, serve.