Miscellaneous: Making Limecello

I've just started my first attempt at making Limecello. Limoncello is perhaps more familiar, but limes make a good liqueur too. We have a lime tree that produced a lot of fruit this past summer, so I've decided to make Limecello. We tend to think of limes as green, but fully ripe limes turn yellow as in the photos below. 

It's a simple process. Today I harvested the limes, washed them, and stripped them of their zest. I put the zest in a mason jar and covered it with Everclear (120 proof; high proof alcohol apparently does the best job of extracting the essence). I'll let the zest sit in the alcohol for about three weeks to a month to let the alcohol extract the essence from the peel. When that's finished, I'll cut the alcohol and sweeten the extract with sugar syrup and it's done. 

Last year, I planted a Santa Theresa lemon tree in the garden.  Santa Theresa is the traditional variety used for making Limoncello in Italy but the tree has only a few fruits so far. This Limecello will be a dry run for making Limoncello in the future when the lemon tree matures.