Lemon sparkling water, three ways
The unsweetened infusion, the syrup, and the ratio that makes the finished drink.
In season: Year-round. Eureka and Lisbon peak December to May, and that is when the peel carries the most oil.
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Infused, unsweetened
Use
Peel from 2 lemons in wide strips, taken with a vegetable peeler, per 1 litre. No wheels, no slices.
Method
Peel in long strips and check the back of each one. If you can see white, scrape it off with a paring knife. Drop the strips into cold still water and refrigerate.
Time
2 hours for a clean lemon-oil smell. 4 hours is the ceiling. Past that the water goes flat and faintly bitter even with the pith removed.
Sparkling
Still water for the steep. Lemon is one of the few that also survives being built to order, so if you are in a hurry, twist a strip of peel over a glass of sparkling and drop it in.
Keeps
3 days refrigerated once the peel is out. Leaving the peel in past 4 hours is the thing that ruins it.
The syrup
Ratio
1 cup sugar : 1 cup water : peel from 4 lemons : 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
Method
Heat the sugar and water just until the sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes, with no boil. Off the heat, add the peel and steep 30 minutes covered. Strain, cool to room temperature, then stir in the juice. The juice never touches heat.
Keeps
3 weeks refrigerated. It freezes fine in a cube tray, though the thawed version tastes a little duller.
Note
Oleo saccharum is the better lemon syrup and it needs no heat at all. Peel 4 lemons, toss the strips with 1 cup sugar in a jar, leave it on the counter 4 hours or overnight. The sugar draws the oil out and turns into a thick yellow syrup by itself. Stir in the juice from the peeled fruit and you are done.
The finished soda
1 part syrup to 4 parts sparkling water over ice
If it tastes like lemonade instead of lemon soda, the peel step got skipped. Lemonade is juice and sugar. Lemon soda needs the oil off the outside of the fruit, which is where the smell lives.
The shrub version
Lemon has no flesh worth macerating, so it usually rides along as the acid in a berry or stone fruit shrub. The exception is a honey version: 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup white wine vinegar, shaken cold and rested 3 days.
What doesn't work: Lemon wheels floating in a pitcher overnight is the most common version of this and it produces bitter water with limp rind in it. The bitterness is limonin coming out of the white pith, which starts around the four hour mark in cold water and never stops. The second failure is boiling zest for syrup. The aroma is volatile oil and it leaves with the steam, so boiled lemon syrup smells like nothing and tastes like sweet acid.
Goes with: ThymeLavenderBasilBlueberryGinger