If you have ever zested limes by hand, you'll know the time and care it takes to collect the flavour-packed thin skin without taking the pith that makes food and drinks bitter.
But to the relief of time-poor chefs, as well as breweries and distilleries battling staff shortages around Australia, two innovative farmers have invented a machine to help make an alternative, flash-frozen lime zest.
In a closely guarded room monitored by security cameras, Linda and Daniel Tabone have come closer to perfecting what they believe is the world's only mechanical lime zester.
"This is probably our eighth or ninth prototype now," Mr Tabone said.
"With this machine we can produce about 20 kilograms a day of pure zest."
Saving the farm
Born of necessity, the invention has saved their citrus farm at Tandur by preventing tonnes of perfectly good fruit from being dumped when gluts of fresh limes cause prices to plummet.
"In 2007 the writing was on the wall," Ms Tabone said.
"More people were planting lime trees and the prices were going down, and we thought our options are either value-add or go off-farm for jobs."
They began hand zesting their limes and created a popular line of lime salts, dehydrated lime slices, cordials and chilli lime sodas.
"Way back when we went, 'OK, if this keeps going, we'll actually go to the zesting machine shop and buy an existing machine,'" Ms Tabone said.
"But we found out they didn't exist, so then we thought, 'Well, we'll see if we can make one.'"
To protect their intellectual property the Tabones have not allowed photographs of their latest model — a 600-kilogram beast of a machine that needs to be fed continuously once it has been started.
Trays of the prized zest are then blast-frozen at -40 degrees Celsius.
"Once it runs we don't stop," Mr Tabone said.
"We don't stop for lunch, we don't stop for smoko — we just run it until the run is complete.
"It's a bit of a bugger to clean, as well, once you finish, so we only run it when we have to — but like I said, it makes it a lot more valuable than just juicing fruit."
'Bloody handy'
Kangaroo Island Spirits head distiller Charlie Schmidt is one of the couple's regular customers.
He said the frozen lime zest was "bloody handy" for the company's signature dry gin, which included wild grown boobialla (native juniper), pink peppercorn, lime and other fresh botanicals.
"Wild gin is our most popular gin and lime zest is one of the crucial ingredients," Mr Schmidt said.
"If we didn't have Suncoast Limes and their ability to do the lime zesting so easily and so cost effectively and then ship it down here frozen and fresh, we'd have to hand-peel all of these limes.
"It just saves us hours and hours of work and it's honestly better quality.
"We still have to zest a lot of fruit by hand and it is a pain — it is labour intensive, takes a long time and is just annoying.
"It is just another job and while you're doing that job you can't be doing something else."
Mr Tabone said 5 per cent of the business now involved selling fresh limes, with wholesale orders for flash-frozen zest and lime juice allowing the pair to sell the fruits of their labour year-round.
"Our value-added products are going out as much as we can make them, which is pretty good," he said.
After more than a decade of exhausting years running the farm, value-adding and attending weekend markets, Ms Tabone has been able to step back from face-to-face sales and concentrate on production.
"We're actually still getting people coming to us wanting our product," she said.
"We went hard for those first few years, but it has paid off."
