Elder flower champagne

[Fanch]

Hey,

Trying for the 1st time elder champagne.
And doubt is creeping on me.
1: my wife thout the tree we planted 2 years ago was a white beam. I am 99% sure it is an elder.
2: while you can find a lot of places that tells you how to find Nd make elder champagne, I did not see anywhere, if all elder species are good for it.
3. Our tree (stalks) is only 2 years old but it seems to have flowered early
4. I cannot remember the color of the berries from last year.

All of that make me suspicious.
I already collected the flowers, and it had been a week in the bucket fermenting. So I can not provide a pic of the flower, but attached are pics of the leafs and tree.

If someone could reassure me, I would appreciate it. Or is it good for the dump?

On another note, I am planning to let it ferment to the end and then add priming sugar before bottling. Is that good and used practice?

Thank you in advance.

 

[An Ankoù]

Hi Fanch,
That doesn't look like elder to me, and it's certainly not whitebeam. It looks more like rowan, but I could be wrong.
I make elderflower champagne every year and, although we have elders in the garden and in the surrounding coutryside, I always use dried flowers that I've bought from one of the homebrew suppliers. Sometimes the flowers can smell horrible- like cat's pee.
Many of the recipes I've seen range from ridiculous to positively dangerous and I would seriously consider whether fermentation has completed sufficiently for bottling. I always make mine the same way: I make a rhubarb wine and then add the elderflowers to the nearly finished wine. Two weeks later I bottle and prime the bottles with a little sugar.
I'd be happy to provide more details if you're interested.
By the way. I let the berries develop and mix one part elderberries to two parts blackberries for both jam and red wine.

 

[Agentgonzo]

Using Google lens on that image, it comes up saying it's a rowan

 

[Agentgonzo]

This is our rowan tree

 

[Fanch]

Yep it is definitely rowan. I cannot beleive that I got it so wrong...

On the positive side it seems the flower are edible. I even found a post on the net of a person that did the same has me.

I might as well get it into some bottle and see what it taste like.

 

[Begbie]

Hi Fanch,
That doesn't look like elder to me, and it's certainly not whitebeam. It looks more like rowan, but I could be wrong.
I make elderflower champagne every year and, although we have elders in the garden and in the surrounding coutryside, I always use dried flowers that I've bought from one of the homebrew suppliers. Sometimes the flowers can smell horrible- like cat's pee.
Many of the recipes I've seen range from ridiculous to positively dangerous and I would seriously consider whether fermentation has completed sufficiently for bottling. I always make mine the same way: I make a rhubarb wine and then add the elderflowers to the nearly finished wine. Two weeks later I bottle and prime the bottles with a little sugar.
I'd be happy to provide more details if you're interested.
By the way. I let the berries develop and mix one part elderberries to two parts blackberries for both jam and red wine.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but it sparked an interest because I was just thinking about doing another batch.

@An Ankoù , could you share your recipe for Elderflower Champagne please? I made some last year, following a youtuber's recipe and method (which was a safe method - no bottling after 2 days!) but it's very dry. I would prefer it a little sweeter. Maybe yours is dry too, but would be good to compare.

 

[An Ankoù]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but it sparked an interest because I was just thinking about doing another batch.

@An Ankoù , could you share your recipe for Elderflower Champagne please? I made some last year, following a youtuber's recipe and method (which was a safe method - no bottling after 2 days!) but it's very dry. I would prefer it a little sweeter. Maybe yours is dry too, but would be good to compare.

I'll get onto it first thing as I need to look up the quantities. Post--doing-the-tax-return celbration has left me somewhat wasted. It's not over-dry and it's not cloyingly sweet. In fact it's spot on.

Good morning @Begbie
My recipes for all wines are in gallons as I've only ever made them in gallons. Dried elderflowers in grams:
To make a demijohn full ( 1 gallon)
3lb rhubarb after the ends have been cut off, 3lb white sugar.
Cut the ends off, wash and shake dryish and then cut into chunks ½ to 1 inch long. No need to peel. In a bowl, cover the rhubard with the sugar and leave for 24 hours. You can stir from time to time to make sure the sugar gets to all the rhubarb. Don't add any water.
Drain off the syrup into a bucket, add some water to rinse the sugar off the rhubarb and pass through a colander. Continue until you've got a gallon of juice. Add yeast and nutrient. Champagne yeast is good although this alone won't make it fizzy. After initial fermentation has subsided, put the wine into a demijohn. In due course you'll want to rack the wine into a second demijohn: put 20-25g of dried elderflowers into a hop bag or other small bag and squeeze the bag into the second demijohn. Rack the wine onto the elderflowers. When the wine is clear, prime some bottles with a teaspoonful of sugar per bottle (I use old champagne bottles) and rack the wine into the bottles and cork tightly. Swing top beer bottles would be excellent for this. Leave for several months for the wine to carbonate and mature.
Enjoy.

 

[Applesnmore]

Agreed its an Rowan aka Mountain Ash. Has red berries which can be made into a jelly which goes well with game meat like pheasant.

Looked for a photo, surprisingly not got one other than this sign. The branches are pithy, Rod like, then branch oddly. Flowers on the previous seasons wood.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

The recipe I used for Elderflower champagne

Harvest the flowers in am ideally.
Snip the flowers off the end of the bunches so there's not much stalk.
I filled pint glass with lightly pressed in flowers.
1.25 kg white sugar,
zest of two lemons and the juice of two lemons.

All into bottom of 25 litre ferment bucket and then poured over 4 pints or so of boiling water.
Liquid from a stewed tea bag and squeezed bag into fermenter as well.
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar.

added wine nutrient and another 4 pints of water.

I scaled the recipe up for triple the quatity. OG was 1.072
I put champagne yeast on it at the right temp.

Stirred it once or twice a day during ferment.
Then near end I racked it off into fermentasaurus to build pressure to 30psi.
Once it had cleared, I didn't use any sod met or finings I then counter pressure filled the champagne bottles with clear elderflower sparkling.

A few bottles I added some sugar to as I thought might not have high enough vols and they have carbed a bit more, but not much.

It is dry.
Your only options for less dry are tricky. If you can counter pressure fill bottles before end of ferment then you will be putting fizzy in, but then you would need to pasteurise the bottles to kill the yeast and stop activity.
Or you would need to back sweeten the bottles at the time of bottling with a non fermentable sugar, I've heard that erythritol is quite good in mead, I've not tried it myself. You tube channel called doin the most they are keen on it and could give idea re dosing.
I've used monk fruit extract for back sweetening a brut lo calorie Hazy ipa and that worked very well but it does have a faint colour, might give your elderflower a tinge of colour.

It's still drinking well 2 years later so must have been a good process. Wife not that keen on it but every one I've given a bottle to raves about it.

My elderflowers I picked didn't have the incredible aroma that I've sometimes smelled on some UK bushes. But even though as some say slight cats pee smell the taste and aroma is right.

Will be kegging the elderflower saison imminently and can't wait to see how it comes out.

 

[Begbie]

@An Ankoù - I'm almost ready to add dried elderflower to my rhubarb wine that's almost done fermenting. Bloody covid eventually caught me at the weekend, so I'm a couple of days over the time when I should have racked off the wine.

Anyway, the dried elderflower I have doesn't smell of elderflower, even when added to warm water to make a tea. I questioned the seller on amazon but they have checked and confirmed it's not mislabelled, and said that the aroma will appear when rehydrated in the wine.

Do you experience the same with your dried elderflower?

 

[An Ankoù]

@An Ankoù - I'm almost ready to add dried elderflower to my rhubarb wine that's almost done fermenting. Bloody covid eventually caught me at the weekend, so I'm a couple of days over the time when I should have racked off the wine.

Anyway, the dried elderflower I have doesn't smell of elderflower, even when added to warm water to make a tea. I questioned the seller on amazon but they have checked and confirmed it's not mislabelled, and said that the aroma will appear when rehydrated in the wine.

Do you experience the same with your dried elderflower?

I'll go and have a sniff.

 

[gillonstewart]

Yep it is definitely rowan. I cannot beleive that I got it so wrong...

On the positive side it seems the flower are edible. I even found a post on the net of a person that did the same has me.

I might as well get it into some bottle and see what it taste like.

The berries of Rowan trees can be made into a wine that tastes like Fino sherry. I've never had a great deal of luck with it but then I don't like Fino.