Making Yuzushu (or any citrus liqueur)

Firstly, many thanks to the Japanese Food Lab recipe here! I used it as my base recipe well as a few others for reference and have set out what I did out below.

I've made umeshu (from green plums), yuzushu and bergamot-shu in the past. Umeshu differs from the ctirus-shus given you don't peel and remove the fruit (you just leave the plums in forever). The following is what I would do for any kind of citrus. 

Video here (sorry, I wasn't sure if I'd post to YT so it's portrait mode but promise I'll do it landscape for next time):

Materials:

• Sterilised glass jar (a 2L jar was not enough for the initial input although was okay to add the rest of the alcohol once the peel and fruit was removed, a 3L jar as suggested by the Japanese Food Lab would have been perfect to minimise pain)
• Cheesecloth (enough to make a little bag for the peel)
• Twine (to tie the cheesecloth bag)
• Yuzu - picked from my tree, I had 654g (391g fruit, 162g peel)
• 250g Japanese white rock sugar
• 981ml shochu (30% alcohol but any neutral alcohol with 30-35% alcohol content would be fine. I've also used Haku vodka in the past.) I'm based in Madrid and got mine from Kensho Sake here. 

As an easier calculation, go with the ratio of fruit/sugar/alcohol as set out in the Japanese Food Lab Recipe:

• 1.2kg yuzu
• 500g rock sugar
• 1.8l alcohol

Steps: 

1. Wash the yuzu, remove the stems if any and remove all blemished parts of the peel to avoid contaminaton of the yuzushu. 
2. Peel the yuzu and try to keep the fruit as whole as possible (to retain as much of the juice as well). 
3. Using a spoon (I used stainless steel) to scrape off the pith (which is bitter) so try to get off as much as possible. 

4. Put all of the yuzu peel (without any pith) into the cheesecloth and tie it with twine. Make the cheesecloth bag as small as possible to avoid losing too much yuzushu when you remove it.

 

5. Layer the rock sugar and yuzu fruit in the jar (order doesn't matter). Add the cheesecloth bag of peel to the jar at the top.

6. Pour in the shochu (hopefully everything will fit haha)

I ran out of space in the jar so I kept some of the leftover shochu and added it to the yuzushu after I removed the fruit and peel. I left the cheesecloth bag in the jar for 3 months as I understand it makes the yuzushu bitter if you leave it for longer-ish but I'd like to test this in the future. 

With the rest of the pith, I added it to grapeseed oil (as neutral as possible) and had a super fragrant lovely yuzu oil after a few days. 

Let me know if you have any questions :)