Dry-hopping with fresh elderflower - a bad idea?

[Thatsmyleg]

I've got a fairly basic IPA fermenting at the moment, but with fresh elderflowers added in the last 5 minutes of the boil. I'm planning to dry-hop with Citra, but I'd like to add some extra elderflowers as well. I froze some of my harvest for this purpose; but freezing didn't work out that well as some of the elderflower heads have gone brown, and I was a bit worried about the effect of putting anything frozen into the brew anyway. But I was wondering if it was safe to put fresh elderflowers into the dry hop? Could the wild yeast or anything else cause a problem?

 

[peebee]

"Dry hopping" with hops is reasonably safe because of hops having an inbuilt anti-septic. Elderflowers don't so you run a bit of a risk (I remember the old elderflower pop recipes and they would spontaneously ferment from the wild yeasts).

 

[IainM]

Yeah, I'd second that. Some people specifically use elderflower to harvest wild yeast from.

 

[Sadfield]

Elderflower flavour is pretty robust, I would poor some boiling water over them, let it cool and then add the resulting tea and flowers into the fv. I've done it this way with no issue, although I normally use elderflower in the last 10 minutes of the boil and the flavour still comes through.

If I'm not mistaken, this is done when making elderflower wine, too.

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[GerritT]

Soak it a few days in vodka? Dump the lot after a few days into the brew, flowers and all.
My 2 pence.

 

[Nicks90]

Put the flowers in 500ml of boiling water and add a campden tablet when it's cooled and leave it 24hours, then pour the elderflower water in via a sieve to catch the flowers?

Can't see why that would'nt work

 

[Thatsmyleg]

Thanks for your feedback guys! I'll put the flowers in boiling water as you suggest. I am wondering if I need it though - I already put some in on the last 5 mins of the boil. But the whole thing is an experiment so we shall see!

 

[Martybhoy]

In James Morton's book, in his Elderflower Pale Ale recipe, he calls for a 1ltr jug of fresh elderflowers, stalks removed, to be added as an aroma steep, 30mins at no higher than 79°C (for a 20ltr batch). I assume this temperature would kill any nasties.

He also adds that if you want an ''in your face' elderflower hit, wait till primary fermentation is over and add an elderflower tea, made with fresh or dried flowers steeped in boiling water, till it hits the level of flavour you're after.

He finally says that if you add fresh elderflowers to cool beer, you'll infect it with wild yeast, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Keep us posted as I'm interested in how it turns out

 

[Slid]

I only did the one beer with elderflowers and recall that a little goes a long way. I overdid it quite horribly and it was ages before it was drinkable.

 

[Thatsmyleg]

Thanks for all your advice! I actually went out to collect some more elderflowers a couple of days ago, but found that the majority had already gone - it seems I've missed the harvest now. It's OK though, I still put a load in during the last 5 minutes of the boil, and given Slid's experiences then perhaps I don't need any more. (I dry-hopped with about 60g of Citra.) I'm going to leave it one more week in the fermentor, bottle it, then try one a couple of weeks after that. Will let you know