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.