The Plan (for limoncello)

In my life, I haven't come across too many Italians (from Italy). I know of many, many Italian Americans, and they seem to like everything Italian. I guess I understand that. For the last few months however, we've had an Italian grad student visiting the institute. He like the several other actual Italians I've met, is completely crazy for his homestyle food and beverage. Perhaps he's a bit peculiar in that he also enjoys Indian food and doesn't decry it immediately as "something less" or "inferior" to Italian food. But a couple months of curry thrice a day tends to get to anyone. Recently he's been going nuts for good pasta and certain things Italian.

I have to commend the guy. He's more adventurous than I am when it comes to traveling and seems to be hitting up more parts of Indian than I thought would be possible is such a short time. But, despite all the traveling, he had expressed a desire to have some limoncello and pasta. He asked me one day (not knowing exactly how much I know about alcohol...) if he could get "pure alcohol." I told him, fat chance in this country. Best, option is I make it for him. He looked intrigued and asked how this was possible. So I told him the basic procedure, and he said, sounds great. He tells me he can make a killer good limoncello. I said, it's a deal. He, by the way, is making an American graduate student stipend (which is to say, way more than the professors here) and so he has some purchasing power.

So the plan:

1) Completely ignore any legal restrictions that india may place on home brewing or home distilling and just go for it.

2) Ferment lots of sugar (lucky for me, I brought champagne yeast with me, thanks homesweet homebrew!)

3) Build a still
4) Distill our concoction.
5) Give it to the Italian and let him work lemony magic with it.

How will it turn out? Stay tuned.