Elderflower Champagne

[NiamhManners]

Hi everyone,

This is my 5th year brewing and the third year using elderflower.
We are set to get married next July, and to cut costs we decided to make a lot of our own wine and beer.

My fiancee is a bit of beer novice and usually makes very nice batches, so hes good on the beer front.

I on the other hand, make the wine. The past 2 years had been successful and the result was rather crisp dry, sparkling and pleasant.

Last year however it was not good. It had stuck fermentation, and after restarting it stuck again at a SG of 1020 so the wine was rather sweet and not to my taste.

This year iv changed my recipe and REALLY hope it works out ok because iv made 30 liters!

This was the recipe i used (forgive me if it looks odd, iv sort of made it up)-

1 pint of elderflowers (blossoms only no stalk or bugs)
2.5kg of sugar
5 lemons, zest and juice
1 cup of black tea (for tannin)
1 teaspoon of yeast nutriant
1 sachet of sparkling wine yeast
8 liters of water (4 hot 4 cold)

Iv seen a lot of recipes using white wine vinigar, but i never personally liked the idea of adding vinigar to wine and found it tasted nicer without it....

I have tested the specific gravity before adding the yeast and its measuring at about 1080-1090 so hopefully that should give me a wine of about 11% or so if it goes as low as planned. I plan on bottling at about 1005 because when i bottled the last batch at 1010 i had a few issues with the cork blowing out of the bottles but none that exploded.

Has anyone made elderflower champagne and had good success and ended with a nice dry sparkling wine? Any recipes would be appreciated. :) Thank you

 

[Speccy]

Hi NiamhManners. Congrats on your upcoming big day!

I've made elderflower champers a few times using a recipe very similar to yours and it's come out great. The latest batch went on at the weekend.

The differences in mine are:
- No tea (but could be worth a go?)
- Only 2kg of sugar for 16 litres, to give around a 7% wine, but yours sounds way more fun
- No yeast nutrient - worked fine without but probably can't hurt
- I've tried it both with and without the vinegar and it seemed fine either way - not sure what the point of it is

The idea of bottling it while it's still fermenting terrifies me, so I tend to let it ferment right out (down to about 0.994) and then add a little extra sugar while bottling to give it the fizz.

Hope it goes well for you!

 

[NiamhManners]

Hi Speccy,
Thank you for your reply!
To be honest, the idea of bottling before fermentation has finished this time worries me too after the corks blowing out last time! especially if they are going to be in the bottles waiting for a year.....haha!
I'm hoping it works out well, its reassuring that your last batch was nice, that means i could be in with a chance this year haha!
I also brought a Youngs Winebuddy kit (cheating i know!) but i figured i would try it out, and if its decent enough to drink i may well make it for the wedding too, as it works out at less then £1 per bottle!

 

[Fin420]

I make a few different elderflower wines/cordials at work, I'd suggest swapping the black tea for a handful of non-oiled sultanas (we mince them first) if you do go for this I'd throw in some pectolase to get the best out of them! Congratulations!

 

[Bernardsmit]

Hi NiamhManners - First , Congratulations on your upcoming wedding and marriage. A couple of quick thoughts: the yeast does not need the lemon juice and there is always a risk of a drop in pH so great that the yeast will simply be unable to continue to ferment. (A ph of 3.0 or lower is enough to halt the fermentation) . I would add any lemon juice - for taste - by taste and only when I am ready to bottle.

I make a tea by boiling the florets and allowing that tea to gently cool before pitching the yeast. I generally allow allow the flowers to stay in the fermenter for about a week and then rack the wine off the flowers.

I have scratched my head trying to make sense of those folk recipes that call for the addition of vinegar and all I can imagine was that the original recipes may have assumed that any vinegar added would have included the mother and that would suggest bacterial fermentation going alongside any fungal (yeast) fermentation and so the elderflower wine would be a little like a sour beer. But the idea of willy nilly introducing lactococcus bacteria in my wine making equipment is not something I am comfortable with.
Good luck!

 

[wireless]

Hi NiamhManners,
Great to hear from you since the elderflower and elderberry harvest each year are now firm points in my retirement calendar. These wines have now become a favourite with me and Cheryl (the prettier half). PS Very best wishes for a great partnership - we have just celebrated 41 years together!

I've never made sparkling wine, but hope my experiences with the still versions might be helpful.

I've now been making batches of 20L each of flower and berry wine for many years without any serious problem (very unusually one got stuck at about 1.040 but it started again after I made another yeast starter batch). So I think I've got a reasonably robust recipe here. Of course due to the time of harvest and the type of weather that year, each batch of raw materials will be different - but so far, so good.

ELDERBERRY INGREDIENTS to make 20L wine:-
4.5kg elderberries
5.6kg sugar
4 tea bags
4 tsp glycerine
2 tsp pectolase
4 tsp Youngs Super Wine Yeast Compound
4 tsp Youngs yeast nutrient

METHOD:-
Two-part fermentation, with first part in open 25L bucket covered with muslin, and second part in 25L keg with airlock (this method found to give better method compared to totally air-free methods).
Boil up approx 4L water. Extract berries from stalks as best you can and put into bucket. Add the boiling water into the bucket to sterilise the fruit.
Allow to cool a little (for safety) and then lightly chop up the fruit. (I use a Russell Hobs Hand Blender). Don't overdo the mashing as I'm told that grinding the seeds will add a bitter flavour.
Meanwhile make a mug of tea with the four tea bags and allow to brew for say 5 mins before adding to the bucket just the tea, not the bags....).
Put approx 8L water to boil in a large pan and use this to dissolve the sugar. (Due to availability of pans, I do this in two batches of 4L). Add this to the bucket, top up with approx 4L cold water, stir, and leave for several hours to cool to below 25C.
Record the SG. (Note that this reading will be a little high as you have less than the final amount of water. You can calculate the equivalent Starting Gravity - say that you record 1.110 at this stage, and that you currently have 16L of brew, then SG = 1 + 0.110 x 16 / 20, which equals 1.088.)
Add the other ingredients - your brew has started!

Allow 2 days for the initial ferment (may be vigorous), and then top up to a level of about 21L.
Stir occasionally (once every two days or so).
After 5 to 7 days, strain off the berries and pulp, transferring the liquid into
the fermentation vessel (FV). I use a combination of a vegetable strainer with a fresh piece of muslin underneath. Make sure to add the airlock, that the lid is on securely, and that the airlock bung is securely housed in the lid.
Leave to complete fermentation (I often leave this for between 2 to 4 weeks). You can test the ending SG at this stage and you are looking for ideally something reasonably below 1.000 (I usually get 1.088 to 1.090). If you have the option, place the FV somewhere cold for a week or so (I use my garage). The aim here is to ensure that the yeast is no longer active.
Stop the wine (see tip 2), and leave for another week.
Up to you what you do next. My system is to decant into Demijohns and I usually end up with 4.5 DJs which I can then add rubber stoppers to and store in a dark cupboard until time for bottling. (I like to ensure that I will end up with more than enough to fully fill 4 x DJ, as this will give me 24 bottles - the remains will go into smaller bottles.

ELDERFLOWER INGREDIENTS to make 20L wine:-
Approx 1L of Elderflower heads (snipped off the stalks)
4 x 500mL IKEA Elderflower Cordial (Dryck Flyder)
3.2kg sugar
2 x lemon
4 Tea bags
4 tsp glycerine
4 tsp Youngs Super Wine Yeast Compound
4 tsp Youngs yeast nutrient

METHOD:-
The fermentation is two-part (see Elderberry recipe)
Put 3L water and 2L Cordial on to boil in a large pan.
Snip all heads of the stalks to leave about 1L of flower heads. Add these to the bucket.
When boiling, add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Pour onto the flower heads to sterilise. Stir.
Make a mug of tea using the 4 tea bags. Add the tea to the bucket after it has stewed for approx 5 minutes.
Top up the bucket to about 16L, and wait until cooled below 25C before the next step.
Record the SG (and correct to 20L as per Elderberry recipe above).
Slice the lemons into the bucket, and add the yeast and yeast nutrient.
Cover with muslin for 2 days or so, to allow for a vigorous ferment.
Top up with cold water to about 21L, cover with muslin again and leave for 5 to 7 days. Stir occasionally (once every two days or so).
Decant and filter off the heads into a fermentation vessel with airlock capability. Use a combination of strainer and fresh muslin to filter out as much of the solids as possible. Fit the airlcok and leave to ferment out.
Remainder as per Elderberry recipe.

TIPS:-
1. If you like a sweet wine (we do), then a more reliable method in my experience is to allow the wine to ferment all the sugar out, stop the wine and allow a few days to pass before back-sweetening.
2. To ensure the wine has stopped, I use a mixture of sodium metabisulphite (Campden tablets) and potassium sorbate. For my 20L batches, I use 4 Campden tablets and 2 teaspoons of potassium sorbate.
3. For back-sweetening, I measure the end specific gravity (ideally about 0.990) and then calculate what sugar I need to get to the desired SG. We normally like wine between 1.000 and 1.15 (but there are always exceptions depending on the individual wine). I use a formula of 15mg sugar per litre to raise the SG by 5 points, so for example to get a 20L batch of 0.990 up to 1.000, I would calculate 15 x 20 x 2 = 600mg.
4. Cleanliness - clean everything! I make up solutions of StarSan and put the dilute solutions into plastic spray bottles. One of these will last me several brews. I also store my DJs only after they have been cleaned and I have added a crushed Campden tablet and a couple of tablespoons of water into each. This fills the DJ with gas which maintains cleanliness and reduces the hassle when you are making the wine.

Enjoy!