A New Take On Elderflower Wine

[alanywiseman.]

So I am going to start my elderflower wine/champagne in the next few days. The plan (after reading Award Winning Wines by Bill Smith) is to start a 18L brew with 900-1000g minced saltanas and sugar to about 1.075 (to account for the sugar that will come from the saltanas), plus nutrient and acid. Hopefully this can ferment for 3-4 days then on the first sunny day I plan to collect my elderflowers, boil them in a couple litres of water to steralise then and then add to the brew for 2-3 days. hopefully it will have finished by this point and I will rack/strain and allow it to clear for a few days before bottling 12 primed champagne bottles and stabalising the rest.

Reasoning is that the inital fermentation will blow away a lot of the aroma from the wine hence add the flowers later plus the alcohol present will help extract the flavour. The saltanas are there to add a bit more flavour and a bit of body to it as well.

What do you all think?

 

[RobWalker]

cordial recipes call for you to leave for 24h after boiling then reboil to sterilise. could be wise to maximise flavour. i too considered a dry hop sort of approach. definitely doable!

 

[alanywiseman.]

Rob are you suggesting to boil the flowers leave for 24hrs then reboil and only add the liquid and leave the flowers?

I had also concidered the dryhop approch and I may do it next year as I will have 2 Gallons of wine that i will keep in DJs ans bottle next year so may 'dryhop' one with fresh elderflowers to see the difference.

 

[RobWalker]

well i wouldnt go as far as to suggest it, but most cordial recipes use that method, so there must be some logic in there! lol. im pretty ignorant on the wine stuff, but maybe its food for thought.

looking forward to your results, i plan to make elderflower wine every year for the rest of my life, it would be good to have the best techniques :p

 

[alanywiseman.]

Thanks for the suggestion :thumb: it is deffinetly food for thought.

I have thought about going this route due to the lack of aroma in my current elderflower wine.