Elderflower and gooseberry racked off

The 2 demi johns have been siphoned off into a fermenting tub today, strained through muslin to catch the stray flowers and bits. The recipe also said to squeeze the fruit and flowers dry but we did this into a seperate container as its very cloudy and full of sediment. We'll leave it to settle a few days to see whether or not its safe to add to the rest.

tasting notes:

We didn't manage to take the SG of this one what with starting it off in demi johns but this one tastes alcoholic! Its less sweet than the other two brews and much better for it.

We're in the dark a bit on this one now though as the recipe helpfully says "After four days strain and press dry, then continue fermentation. After maturation treat as recommended above." Whatever that means!! We've done a bit more reading into yeasts, sugars, SG's etc. and theres lots of good advice out there but a lot of it seems to conflict. We're none the wiser on the way forward yet - I tell you this brewing is nothing if not confusing!

We're bottling baby!

Yeeha, check this out!! This morning we've washed bottles, stripped labels, steralised all surfaces, bottles, equipment and FINALLY were ready to strain the liquid off the fruit and flowers and bottle the stuff. We poured it through muslin into a clean container and then syphoned it into the bottles... easier said than done... I have a kitchen floor to clean after I've written this entry! However there was still plenty made it into the bottles to make 11 x champagne bottles, 2 x swing tops, 4 x 2 litre pop bottles and 1 x 1 litre pop bottles - all full of our very pink champagne! Oh and just enough for 2 little glasses for us to taste our hard work...

 

Tasting notes:

mmmmm!! Its another very sweet elderflowery brew, perhaps a little too sweet but hopefully this will fade at least a bit as it ages in the bottles. Hearteningly it has the first beginnings of fizz, can't wait to see how it develops. 

Phew, we have fermentation again!

For a wee while we thought we'd thrown the baby out with the bathwater as elderflower no. 1 stopped fermenting when we racked the flowers off on Monday. We feared we might end up with weak sugary wine but luckily its off again! Specific gravity tonight = 1.038 so sugar content still on its way down - just over 7%.

No need to look at marketing a new elderflower alcopop. Phew!

Redcurrant and elderflower still needs to be bottled asap - that'll  still be Saturday, not ideal but hey, Gooseberry and elderflower will be racked off the fruit on Sunday and will be left to continue fermenting a bit more.

Meanwhile Guy's drinking his first pint of his lager - or 'lale' as we've nicknamed it as it's turned out a flavoursome brew almost like a real ale. Most importantly it doesn't taste like homebrew so definitely a result!!

Caretaking of the various brews

Guy has been a busy brewer tonight - for a quick update:

1. Made sure the sugar was dissolved in the gooseberry and elderflower - note to self - dissolve in warm water next time first.

2. Stirred the elderflower and summer fruit

3. Added more champagne yeast to Elderflower no. 1 - after racking it off from the flowers yesterday fermentation seemed to have stopped so more yeast was added to get it going again and reduce the sugar content a bit more.

4. Started off a turbo cider - ltr of apple juice in a DJ with yeast and yeast nutrient. Over the next few days 3 litres more juice will be added until the right balance of sweetness is reached. A bit of an expeiment!

Elderflower cordial recipe

Oooh we're going elderflower mad, I've just picked this one up from a journo at work, non alcoholic but looks refreshingly tasty nevertheless.

Ingredients

• 25 heads of elderflower
• 2 ½ pints water
• 1 bag sugar (1kg)
• 2 oz citric acid
• 2 x lemons

Boil water and dissolve sugar and citric acid, once its tepid add the elderflower, chop the lemons, squeeze them and add to the mix. Sit for 2 ½ days then strain and bottle.

Apparently it does sometimes ferment a bit in the bottle and it does sometimes get a bit of sediment in the bottom but its perfectly drinkable all the same. May just have to try a couple of pints to bottle the taste of summer...

Pink Elderflower Champagne Recipe

Pink Elderflower Champagne 
makes 24 x 75cl bottles 

Ingredients

• 12 heads of elderflower in full bloom
• 2 pints blackcurrents, fresh or thawed
• 8 tbsp wine vinegar
• 2720g white sugar
• 32 pints / 18.4 litres cold water
  

24 champagne or sparkling wine bottles
plus corks and wires 

Cut the large stems from the heads of elderflower and put the blossoms in a sufficiently large bowl or bucket. Add the blackcurrents, the vinegar and the sugar. Pour in the cold water and stir well. Cover the bowl with a cloth and set aside for 24 hours, stirring the mixture from time to time to release the juice from the fruit.
Next day, strain the liquid into the bottles, and cork and wire them securely. Store the bottles on their sides in a cool, dark place for 2-3 weeks. The wine is ready when the corks start to rise in the wires.

Monster brew session!!

Tonight was the night for setting off our new brew experiments before the elderflower season is over for another year - as well as tending to no. 1 which has been brewing now for a week.

Elderflower Champagne no. 1 measured Specific Gravity 1.055, higher than we were expecting to be honest but it was still bubbling away so obviously still fermenting, and smelled fab! We decided to take it off the elferflowers etc. but leave it to ferment out a little more. A cheeky taste was strongly elderflower, quite sweet but very drinkable :o) Piccy above

We also put to brew our version of an Elderflower and gooseberry sparkling recipe adapted from a Truman recipe, details below, 1 gallon split between two demi johns as we're out of fermenting tubs.

After yesterdays pink champagne we also brewed up 24 litres of elder and summer fruit with mixed summer fruits of raspberry, blackberry, black and redcurrant substituting the pure blackcurrant the recipe called for. Its racked off and bottled real soon with no added yeast to hopefully become a low alcohol but very drinkable summer brew ready in 3 weeks!

All that brewing and its got very late... phew! We must be committed to the cause ;o)

Elderflower ponderings in Cheltenham

Spent a day at Cheltenham Food & Drink festival today sampling some yummy delights including some very drinkable elderflower and gooseberry presse - not alcoholic but a great flavour! Definitely set the creative ponderings going and we had a great chat with the v friendly sellers about the whys and wherefores of commercial elderflower picking. The season is short and intense by all accounts and everyone involved spends the few weeks out scouring the local hedgerows and picking 5-6kgs per day of elderflowers!!

Because of the way the flowers sweat once picked each batch is dealt with on a daily basis; they really are quite delicate things. Smelly cars and 'pickers finger' seem the biggest hazards of the job - then by the end of June when the season ends they have a big piss up to celebrate. Sounds awful ;o)

They pick all over Bredon hill wherever they can get the flowers, being careful not to strip each tree so as to leave enough to turn to elder berries and also enough to pollinate and make new trees. 

We also quaffed some pink elderflower champagne, made from a pink garden variety of elder - didn't even know there was such a thing but it sure made tasty juice. This was a very low alcohol drink at between 1-2% made with just the natural yeasts present and probably very different to the stuff we have fermenting away in our spare room! Something else to try?! This trial and error lark is getting a bit out of hand and still not enough bottles...

Sparkling Gooseberry Wine Recipe

Oh we could get carried away here, check this out; another recipe courtesy of Nick Truman is his sparkling gooseberry wine... its just coming up to gooseberry season, I think we need to do some serious planning here to make the most of all these goodies coming our way!

Ingredients

• 5 Ib. green gooseberries, not quite ripe
• 2 3/4 Ib sugar
• 6 oz, sultanas
• 1 gallon water
• Nutrient
• Pectozyme
• Campden tablet
• Champagne yeast

Method
Top, tail and wash the gooseberries, pour boiling water over them and when cool crush the berries with your hands without breaking the pips. Add the Campden tablet, one teaspoonful of pectozyme and the chopped sultanas. After twenty-four hours add an actively fermenting yeast and nutrient, and each day press down the cap of crushed gooseberries After four days strain and press dry, then continue fermentation. After maturation treat as recommended above. Any wine can be made to sparkle by this recommended method, but experiment has shown that apple, pear and gooseberry give the best results.

Edit: 22/6/09

We bought some gooseberries at Cheltenham which actually turned out to be half the required amount for the recipe so we've decided to be a bit inventive and substitute half the gooseberry for a bit of elderflower instead after the yummy supping of the elder and gooseberry cordial yesterday. Recipe as follows:

Ingredients

• 2.5 Ib. green gooseberries, not quite ripe
• 6 heads of elderflower (1.2 oz)
• 2 3/4 Ib sugar
• 6 oz, sultanas
• 1 gallon water
• Nutrient
• Pectozyme
• Campden tablet
• Champagne yeast

We're doing it in 2 demi johns so will split the ingredients 50:50

Beetroot wine recipe

I hope our beetroots in the garden can grow up to become beetroot wine!! This sounds like a great winter warmer recipe quite similar to port. Mmmmm! There are lots of recipes about and most seem to involve cooking the beetroots but this one seemed most specific. Beware the advice of how long to age it for though!! Can we wait that long...?

Thanks to Nick Truman for the following beetroot wine recipe:

Ingredients

• 5 Ib. beetroot
• 6 oz. raisins
• 10 cloves
• 1/2 oz. crushed ginger
• 3 1/4 Ib. sugar
• I gallon water
• 1/2 oz. citric acid 
  
• Campden tablet
• Pectozyme
• Nutrient
• Madeira yeast

Instructions
Scrub the beetroot thoroughly to get rid of every trace of earth and as much of the earthy flavour as possible. Mince, grate or dice the beetroot, add the cloves and ginger and boil in the water until the beetroot is just tender. Strain on to 2 Ib. of the sugar and the chopped raisins. When cool add the acid, the nutrient, the yeast and a teaspoonful of pectozyme. Ferment for five days, then strain out the raisins, add another 1/2 Ib. sugar and continue the fermentation adding the remaining sugar in 4 oz. doses as the S.G. falls below 1.010.

This wine also takes a long time to mature and should be kept for at least two years, and preferably three, before serving.

I'll leave you with some sage advice from Nick himself:

"There is absolutely no doubt: that: the most common fault in wine is its youth. Almost all wine is drunk before it is really ready for the decanter. The most difficult ingredient in winemaking is patience. Frequently the author has been asked to pass his opinion on a 'wine' barely six weeks old. It is like killing baby chicks! Nothing surpasses the value of time."

Wish we had smelly-net!!

The elderflower brew smells awesome mmmmm!!
SG testing tomorrow to see if its ready for the first bottling batch.

Meanwhile GB has barelled the lager and added priming sugar ready to go!

Lavender Wine Recipe

The following recipe is courtesy of Harvington Imbibers Society for lavender wine which we are contemplating for our next brew! Local recipe for local people, gotta be tried I reckon...

Lavender Wine  

Ingredients:

• ¼ to ½ cup dried lavender flowers (off the stems)
• ½ lemon
• tin of white grape concentrate
• 2½ lbs sugar
• yeast
• yeast nutrient
• water - to make 1 gallon of wine

Method:

• Pour 2 pints of boiling water onto the dried flowers and the chopped up lemon.
• Allow to sit, covered, for 3 days - removing the lemon a few hours after you start.
• Dissolve the sugar in hot water and add to the strained of lavender liquor in a demijohn.
• Add grape juice concentrate, yeast nutrient and activated yeast.
• Fit fermenting lock and ferment until finished and clear topping up with water when initial phase has calmed down.

Note - this made a very unusual tasting wine that finished at 18%. 
The Lavender taste came out more and more over time and became a zesty fresh flavour. It might not be to everyone's taste and I would treat it as an aperitif not a table wine.
Lovely if served slightly chilled as an appetiser on a hot summer day.

The bottling plan

We've been doing some investigation into this 'ere bottling so as to get a wine with fizz. Reading Jim's homebrew here there is some great advice that goes into a bit more detail than our starting recipe about getting the right finish and desired alcohol content.

Our OG seems quite high compared to other people's on this site. We've decided to rack off the mixture after 5 days to lift it off the dead yeast and then bottle in stages and experiment to get the right level of fizz. When the gravity gets down to 1.000 we'll bottle some then let the rest ferment out to 0.98 and then do a mix of no prime and slight prime (1/2 tsp of sugar to each 75cl bottle).

Until then we're full steam ahead collecting as many champagne bottles as possible. Drink up folks!

No fermentation yet

Well everything smells lovely but still no sign of any fermentation so we've added some yeast to the mix. Fingers crossed that'll speed things along!

The making of the Elderflower Champagne

The elderflowers were remarkably easy to  pick; 10 mins and we had filled our bags with the 70 heads of flowers needed for the recipe  - double quantities hear we come!! Elderflower bushes are everywhere at the moment and laden with flowers, someone had obviously been at our tree before us but there still rich pickings for everyone.

Back home and Guy got sudden onset hayfever with all the pollen so it was up to me to prep the flowers - snipping off the bigger stems and checking for stray insects, while he got the job of zesting the lemons and limes, oh and the steralising!

After everything was mixed Guy measured the specific gravity so we'll be able to calulate the alcohol volume when the wine is finished. 

Elderflower SG = 1.092

Guy reckons it should ferment down to about 1.006 as a bit of an educated guess, so using the calculator here, we could be about 12% - pretty strong stuff when its finished. 

Elderflower Champagne Recipe

We looked at lots of different recipes but finally settled on this one which seemed to have the right balance of science and annecdote, plus if 4 generations have successfully quaffed these results it can't be bad! Thanks to Hedging Your Bets for the following:

You will need (to make 10-12 litres): 

• a really clean container big enough for the mix (large bucker, bin, brewing tub etc)
• a clean cloth (muslin is best) to cover said container
• strong bottles which will need to be sterilised at bottling time (the ones with spring closures are best, but screw capped fizzy drinks bottles work well)
• syphon tube (one with a clip or tap on the end is preferable)
  

Ingredients

• 35 elderflower heads - pick the ones with the strongest scent
• 2.5kg granulated sugar
• 2 proper tablespoons of white wine vinegar
• 5 litres boiling water & some cold water
• Juice and grated skin (zest) of 5 lemons - unwaxed if possible
• Juice and grated skin (zest) of 1 lime - also unwaxed

Instructions:

1. Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water then put in the large container and add cold water to make a total volume of between 7 and 8 litres.

2. Mix in the elderflowers, the white wine vinegar, the lemon and lime juice and their zests and stir the brew.

3. Cover the whole thing with the clean cloth (or use an airlock if you are a brewer) and put it in a cool place to ferment for two days. If, after a couple of days it has not started fermenting (easy to tell as there will be a foamy sort of scum on top) then add a pinch of dried yeast to get it going. Generally you will find that enough wild yeasts came in with the elderflowers for this not to be necessary.

4. Keep the container covered/airlocked and let the champagne carry on fermenting for another 4-5 days.

5. Using a winemakers sieve or the muslin you covered it with, strain the champagne into another container, let it settle for a couple of hours and siphon it into the sterilised bottles. Do make sure they can take a LOT of pressure. Seal the bottles tightly. N.B. If you are using plastic drinks bottles keep an eye out for ones that start bulging - if they do, loosen the cap to let some carbon dioxide out and then tighten again.

6. Leave it to ferment for at least another week after which it is delicious although it gets better with age. In nearly a hundred years the family has never found out how long it keeps - however much was made never lasted more than a year…

Enjoy ice cold

First things first

After a few successful forays into sloe gin and with some very drinkable home brew under our belt it seems high time to get a bit more adventurous... bring on some hedgerow foraging! As the clouds of white flowers are everywhere at the moment a bit of Elderflower Champagne seems a good a place as any to start...

We hope this blog will become a place to share the highs and lows of our experiments as we brew and concoct our way through the seasons of our local hedgerows.