Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
--
Roy Bailey
West Berkshire.

In article , Roy Bailey
writes
Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
Every year Joan makes Elderflower Champagne, which is the fizzy summer
drink with just a tiny amount of alcohol in it, very popular with
kiddies. It uses no yeast, just elderflower heads, lemons and sugar.

Today I set up our annual 2-gallon kit of Elderflower Melomel, near
enough what you are making, but made with honey (optional). Last Friday
(the 13th.) I selected seven good heads of balmy elderflower and three
full blooms of Zepherine Drouhin rose. (I let Joan nose test them, then
have a wish, well, 13+7+3 and all that!) I infused them with the rind
and flesh of one lemon in 4 pints of hot, not boiling water. Today I
strained off the liquor into 2 demi-johns, added a white wine yeast
which I had pre-fermented, a dash of wine tannin and 1/2 kg. of plain
white sugar to each jar. When that is bubbling well tomorrow, I shall
add 1lb. honey and half a can of white wine concentrate to each jar. I
will let that foam up for a day or two then top up the jars to ferment
to a finish - 10-15 days or so. After that it's a case of judgement
whether more sugar or filtering or fining is needed before bottling it
to keep for 12 months. It is based on an old Druid love potion and after
over 30 years of making it I can guarantee that it is very popular with
the ladies. ;-))
--
Alan & Joan Gould - North Lincs.

"Roy Bailey" wrote in message
...
Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our
favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact
recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine
concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
--
Roy Bailey
West Berkshire.


Hi Roy - try these ones - any use??
http://www.dbutler22.freeserve.co.uk/winemak2.htm
or this one
http://www.hopshopuk.com/recipes/elderflower.html

Chris

"Alan Gould" wrote in message
...
In article , Roy Bailey
writes
Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our
favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact
recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine
concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
Every year Joan makes Elderflower Champagne, which is the fizzy summer
drink with just a tiny amount of alcohol in it, very popular with
kiddies. It uses no yeast, just elderflower heads, lemons and sugar.

I used to make this for the children when they were young too but I lost the
recipe. I would like to make it now for my grandson. Please would Joan
share the recipe... oh and the druid one might be nice to have too? )

Ophelia

Elderflower Wine Recipe at Jack Keller's Site:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques43.asp


"Roy Bailey" wrote in message
...
Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our
favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact
recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine
concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
--
Roy Bailey
West Berkshire.

"Ophelia" wrote in message ...
"Alan Gould" wrote in message
...
In article , Roy Bailey
writes
Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our
favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact
recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine
concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
Every year Joan makes Elderflower Champagne, which is the fizzy summer
drink with just a tiny amount of alcohol in it, very popular with
kiddies. It uses no yeast, just elderflower heads, lemons and sugar.

I used to make this for the children when they were young too but I lost the
recipe. I would like to make it now for my grandson. Please would Joan
share the recipe... oh and the druid one might be nice to have too? )

The one our family has always used is:

2 heads of elderflowers, juice and thinly-pared rind of 1 lemon, 24
oz sugar, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 1 gallon of water. Leave well covered
for 24 hours, then strain into pop bottles. Leave for up to a
fortnight to build up fizz and clear.

We call it "Elderflower lemonade"; but note that it's quite strongly
alcoholic: a pound and a half of sugar in a gallon could in theory
give seven-and-a-half percent alcohol. Which is as strong as that
lethal cheap cider in blue bottles.

Reducing the sugar to 4 oz will make it essentially non-alcoholic; but
then it gets rather chancy: you need to drink it in, say, a week, in
case it goes off because it didn't have enough alcohol in it to act as
a preservative. I find this works about half the time; you add
artificial sweeteners dissolved in hot water at the start to make up
for the lack of sugar.

Mike.

The one our family has always used is:

2 heads of elderflowers, juice and thinly-pared rind of 1 lemon, 24
oz sugar, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 1 gallon of water. Leave well covered
for 24 hours, then strain into pop bottles. Leave for up to a
fortnight to build up fizz and clear.

We call it "Elderflower lemonade"; but note that it's quite strongly
alcoholic: a pound and a half of sugar in a gallon could in theory
give seven-and-a-half percent alcohol. Which is as strong as that
lethal cheap cider in blue bottles.

Theoretically, but it depends on the wild yeasts that have innoculated the
brew. Some don't produce much, if any alcohol.

The Austrians make a similar recipe, but it's rather a syrup, and keeps a
lot longer because of the sugar and acid concentration.


Elderflower syrup [Hollersirup] (non alcoholic, still)
makes 3 Litres of concentrated syrup.

20 Elderflower heads - washed (to remove the yeasts and reduce
fermentation).
2 lemons, sliced
70 g citric acid
2kg sugar*

1. Put the flower, lemons and citric acid in a bowl and pour in half the
water(1 1/2 litres) and stir. Leave to stand for 48 hours in a cool but not
cold place. 2. Seive the liquid and add it to the sugar, add more water to
make 3 litres. 3. bottle and store cool.

It should be diluted to taste with sparkling water before you drink it, say
around 1:3.

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003 13:23:37 +0200, Tim
wrote:

I forgot to add that I find it's ok to leave it for just 24 hours, instead
of the 48 it says.
YMMV
Tim.

In message , Alan Gould
writes
In article , Roy Bailey
writes
Help! We have picked a large bucketful of elderflowers to make our favourite
wine, but we can neither find the recipe book nor remember the exact recipe
(because we didn't make any last year.)

We normally use one which involves the flowers, sugar, white wine concentrate,
citric acid, yeast nutrient and yeast.

Does anyone have any good recipes, please?
Every year Joan makes Elderflower Champagne, which is the fizzy summer
drink with just a tiny amount of alcohol in it, very popular with
kiddies. It uses no yeast, just elderflower heads, lemons and sugar.

Yours may be. But the recipe I had (and I will try to find again) was
for seriously alcoholic stuff using champagne yeast double fermented.
Tidying up we recently found a bottle lurking in a dark corner from the
mid 80's and amazingly it was still very good. The bottle of elderberry
wine of the same vintage was fit only for drain cleaner. ISTR the key to
good elderflower champagne is to make sure only flower petals and no
chlorophyll gets into the batch.

Necessary to use real champagne bottles to stand the pressure and worth
wrapping them in cling film just in case. Exploding wine bottles is
messy.

Today I set up our annual 2-gallon kit of Elderflower Melomel, near
enough what you are making, but made with honey (optional). Last Friday
(the 13th.) I selected seven good heads of balmy elderflower and three
full blooms of Zepherine Drouhin rose.

My recollection is that my old recipe used a lot more elderflower heads
(and very tedious they were to prepare).

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

"Tim" wrote in message

It should be diluted to taste with sparkling water before you drink it,
say
around 1:3.

Thanks Tim.. I shall give this one a try

Ophelia

"Mike Lyle" wrote in message

We call it "Elderflower lemonade"; but note that it's quite strongly
alcoholic: a pound and a half of sugar in a gallon could in theory
give seven-and-a-half percent alcohol. Which is as strong as that
lethal cheap cider in blue bottles.

Reducing the sugar to 4 oz will make it essentially non-alcoholic; but
then it gets rather chancy: you need to drink it in, say, a week, in
case it goes off because it didn't have enough alcohol in it to act as
a preservative. I find this works about half the time; you add
artificial sweeteners dissolved in hot water at the start to make up
for the lack of sugar.

That is wonderful thank you Mike) It certainly sounds familier)

Ophelia

Thanks to everyone for the links.

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques43.asp was the best with two
recipes; one of which appeared similar to my lost one. Alan's was a
little more complicated than I required.

http://www.hopshopuk.com/recipes/elderflower.html also looked a good
one, but I rejected http://www.dbutler22.freeserve.co.uk/winemak2.htm
because it used bakers' yeast.

Never!
--
Roy Bailey
West Berkshire.

Martin Brown pushed briefly to the front
of the queue on Tue, 17 Jun 2003 09:44:09 +0100, and nailed this to
the shed door:

^ mid 80's and amazingly it was still very good. The bottle of elderberry
^ wine of the same vintage was fit only for drain cleaner. ISTR the key to
^ good elderflower champagne is to make sure only flower petals and no
^ chlorophyll gets into the batch.

Just like the secret of good elderberry wine is to make sure no stalky
bits get into the pulp. Whether it would guarantee it for 20 years, I
cannot say, I'm lucky if mine lasts 20 months ...

Andy
--

"No, you claim the magpie is to blame for all the
worlds ills, based on your ignorance of magpies."
(4a7391c12e538ef306d33d71c9482221@TeraNews)

Roy Bailey pushed briefly to the front of
the queue on Tue, 17 Jun 2003 17:47:42 +0100, and nailed this to the
shed door:

^ Thanks to everyone for the links.
^
^ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques43.asp was the best with two
^ recipes; one of which appeared similar to my lost one. Alan's was a
^ little more complicated than I required.

And thanks to you for asking the question. I make a lot of wine but I
never managed elderflower yet, I always seem to manage to miss the
window of opportunity which always seems rather small (and because I
don't work to recipes, I don't have any elederflower fundamentals
squirrelled away). This year, though, I couldn't miss it if I tried;
I've never seen so much elder blossom. Lots of it in places where I
didn't even know there were trees (I know, I know, they're not really
trees ...), so the other good news is, unless it all gets suddenly
trashed by bad weather, there's going to be enough elderberries in the
autumn to sink the Titanic. Elderberry wine, mmmmm ... who needs red
grapes?

Andy
--

"No, you claim the magpie is to blame for all the
worlds ills, based on your ignorance of magpies."
(4a7391c12e538ef306d33d71c9482221@TeraNews)

In article , Martin Brown
writes
Every year Joan makes Elderflower Champagne, which is the fizzy summer
drink with just a tiny amount of alcohol in it, very popular with
kiddies. It uses no yeast, just elderflower heads, lemons and sugar.

Yours may be. But the recipe I had (and I will try to find again) was
for seriously alcoholic stuff using champagne yeast double fermented.

Not the same potion Martin. I'm pressing Joan for her recipe/method of
making the fizzy summer drink traditionally known as Elderflower
Champagne, but now not supposed to be called that according to EU regs.
IIRC it is much the same as others have described in this thread except
that Joan uses white wine vinegar in hers. I believe there is a
commercial preparation manufactured under the title of Elderflower
Lemonade or similar.

I'll also go into a bit more detail about E. Melomel when I can find a
suitable gap between gardening - must get the priorities right ;-)
--
Alan & Joan Gould - North Lincs.