Watermelon-lime liqueur
A 28% liqueur built on sweet watermelon and tart lime. Watermelon is mostly water with a delicate flavor, so this recipe concentrates the juice by freezing it first instead of steeping chunks. Expect a pale pink liqueur rather than a clear one. Treat the amounts as a starting point and tune them by taste.
- Vodka in
- 2 L
- Liqueur out
- about 2.8 L
- Strength
- roughly 28% ABV
- Start to bottle
- about 1 week
Shopping list
Amounts scale with the batch size above. The method text uses the 2 L amounts.
Grocery store
Liquor store
Equipment
The ingredients
Method
The trick here is freeze concentration: frozen juice melts sugar and flavor first and water last, so collecting only the first part of the melt gives you intense watermelon without watering the vodka down. The lime zest steeps for just three days, and the whole thing is bottled in about a week.
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Day 0
Start the lime jar
Scrub the limes and zest 6 of them into 500 ml of the vodka, taking only the green skin and none of the white pith. Seal it and keep it dark for 3 days, shaking once a day. Keep the other 2 limes for juice.
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Day 0
Juice the watermelon
Scrub the rind, cut the flesh away, blend it briefly and pour it through a fine sieve, then through cheesecloth. Let it drip rather than pressing hard. You should get about 2.5 L of juice.
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Day 0
Freeze the juice
Pour the juice into the freezer container, leaving a few centimeters of space because it expands, and freeze it solid. That takes about a day.
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Days 1–2
Collect the concentrate
Turn the frozen block upside down over a jug in the refrigerator and let it thaw slowly. Collect the first 700 ml or so, which comes out deep pink and sweet, and stop when the drips turn pale and watery. Stir the 200 g of sugar into the concentrate until it dissolves, then mix it into the remaining 1.5 L of vodka and keep it in the refrigerator.
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Day 3
Strain the lime jar
Strain the lime vodka through a coffee filter. It should smell bright and zesty; if you leave it longer it starts to taste bitter and piney.
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Days 4–5
Settle, filter and blend
Carefully pour the watermelon extract off the sediment that has settled, and filter it through coffee filters. Add the lime extract a little at a time, then the juice of 2 limes and a pinch of salt, tasting as you go. If it still needs more tartness, dissolve the citric acid in a spoonful of the liqueur and add it a little at a time.
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Then 1 week
Bottle and rest
Bottle it and let it rest for a week in the refrigerator or a cool cellar. Fresh watermelon flavor fades quickly, so keep it cold and drink it within about three months.
Keep it safe
- Scrub the watermelon rind before cutting. The knife carries whatever is on the skin into the flesh, and melons have been linked to food poisoning outbreaks.
- Watermelon juice spoils quickly. Use clean equipment, keep the juice cold, and mix the concentrate into the vodka on the day it thaws.
- Leave headroom in the freezer container; freezing juice expands and can crack a full container.
Tuning the next batch
- Watermelon too faint: collect less concentrate next time, stopping earlier in the melt, and choose a riper melon.
- Too sharp: add more watermelon extract or a little sugar, and less lime extract.
- Tastes flat: a pinch of salt or a little citric acid wakes it up.
- Color turning brown or orange: normal for fresh watermelon. Keeping it cold and dark slows it down.
To serve
Serve it ice-cold in small glasses, or over ice. For a long drink, top 50 ml with 100 ml of soda water and add a lime wedge and a small watermelon triangle.
