Elderflower Cider

[Leon103]

A colleague as a few elderflower trees on his family farm and as enquired about doing a elderflower cider with me.

Anyone got any recipes?

 

[Shirley Bassett]

Last year I used a standard turbo cider recipe and made 18 litres.

Recipe was:

17 litres of Lidl Apple Juice,
3 Cooking apple liquidised in a blender,
1 litre of strong tea, made from 10 teabags,
1tsp of Pectolase,
1tsp of yeast nutrient,
1 small packet of cider yeast,
20 large elderflower heads.

I picked the elderflower heads on a warm sunny morning. I read that they are the right conditions for the plant to produce pollen, and this is what gives the flowers their flavour.

Secondly my fermenting vessel only holds 19 litres so I initially only used 12 litres of Apple juice.

I snipped the flowers from their heads so as not to use too much of the green stems, as they went into the fermenting vessel.

I then poured the tea onto the flowers. I then added 5 litres of apple juice, stirred thoroughly. Added the liquidised apples, and chemicals stirred again and then made up to 13 litres, with apple juice. Finally I sprinkled on the sachet of yeast. Fitted the airlock and left it to ferment.

Once this had fermented out I poured the liquid through a muslin sieve to remove the coarse flowers My sieve system was a piece of muslin, draped inside a brewing bucket, and clipped at the edge with clothes pegs. If you stretch the muslin tight, then some of your brew can bounce off as you strain it. I then added a further 3 litres of apple juice to the strained brew and left it ferment for a while. I then added a further litre and then another in two stages to make the final 18.

I use small stages because If I try to ferment 18 litres from the start it tends to come through the airlock.

Once the cider had fully fermented out I batch primed it with sugar at 10g of sugar / litre of cider.

If served chilled this priming is OK. If served at room temp it is very lively.

I like dry cider so didn‘t add any back sweetener.

i didn’t take any gravity readings, but turbo cider tends to end around 1.000

I’m lead to believe that 20g of sugar per litre will ferment out to 1% alcohol by volume, so you can roughly calculate the alcohol content from the information on the apple juice packaging. You will need to add a further 0.5% abv for the priming sugar.

Good luck and enjoy.

 

[Leon103]

Last year I used a standard turbo cider recipe and made 18 litres.

Recipe was:

17 litres of Lidl Apple Juice,
3 Cooking apple liquidised in a blender,
1 litre of strong tea, made from 10 teabags,
1tsp of Pectolase,
1tsp of yeast nutrient,
1 small packet of cider yeast,
20 large elderflower heads.

I picked the elderflower heads on a warm sunny morning. I read that they are the right conditions for the plant to produce pollen, and this is what gives the flowers their flavour.

Secondly my fermenting vessel only holds 19 litres so I initially only used 12 litres of Apple juice.

I snipped the flowers from their heads so as not to use too much of the green stems, as they went into the fermenting vessel.

I then poured the tea onto the flowers. I then added 5 litres of apple juice, stirred thoroughly. Added the liquidised apples, and chemicals stirred again and then made up to 13 litres, with apple juice. Finally I sprinkled on the sachet of yeast. Fitted the airlock and left it to ferment.

Once this had fermented out I poured the liquid through a muslin sieve to remove the coarse flowers My sieve system was a piece of muslin, draped inside a brewing bucket, and clipped at the edge with clothes pegs. If you stretch the muslin tight, then some of your brew can bounce off as you strain it. I then added a further 3 litres of apple juice to the strained brew and left it ferment for a while. I then added a further litre and then another in two stages to make the final 18.

I use small stages because If I try to ferment 18 litres from the start it tends to come through the airlock.

Once the cider had fully fermented out I batch primed it with sugar at 10g of sugar / litre of cider.

If served chilled this priming is OK. If served at room temp it is very lively.

I like dry cider so didn‘t add any back sweetener.

i didn’t take any gravity readings, but turbo cider tends to end around 1.000

I’m lead to believe that 20g of sugar per litre will ferment out to 1% alcohol by volume, so you can roughly calculate the alcohol content from the information on the apple juice packaging. You will need to add a further 0.5% abv for the priming sugar.

Good luck and enjoy.

Thank you. I suppose using Apple juice is better than plain sugar which I see in most recipes.

 

[Shirley Bassett]

Leon,

If you use sugar and water you get elderflower champagne, you can find a recipe for that within this Forum. There a few variants.

You asked for elderflower cider, hence the use of supermarket apple juice.

I’ve made both over the years. I personally prefer the cider.

I’ve got 60 litres of AJ waiting for the flowers to emerge in Northern Scotland, which are just coming out.

Which ever you make I also read that adding too many flower heads can make the end product gloopy.

The elderflower also has its own yeast so you could kill this off with Campden prior to starting your fermentation. I didn’t do this.

I have since noted the number of messages you have posted, so I may have not respected your brewing experience and put it too much detail, but it may help anyone else considering making EC.

There used to be a YouTube vid on how to make.

Kind regards,


Shirley

 

[VW911]

I used to work for a cider company, and we used to infuse the already fermented cider with both fresh, and dried flowers overnight.
Can't remember the exact quantities, but I did a 5 gallon batch last year, with the addition of 50g of dried flowers, and it turned out pretty good.
Just be careful not to overdo the flowers, as it can taste like cats ****!!!!
Maybe try a litre or two of (any) made cider, and add a few flowers, until you get the flavour you want, and upscale from there....

 

[Leon103]

Leon,

If you use sugar and water you get elderflower champagne, you can find a recipe for that within this Forum. There a few variants.

You asked for elderflower cider, hence the use of supermarket apple juice.

I’ve made both over the years. I personally prefer the cider.

I’ve got 60 litres of AJ waiting for the flowers to emerge in Northern Scotland, which are just coming out.

Which ever you make I also read that adding too many flower heads can make the end product gloopy.

The elderflower also has its own yeast so you could kill this off with Campden prior to starting your fermentation. I didn’t do this.

I have since noted the number of messages you have posted, so I may have not respected your brewing experience and put it too much detail, but it may help anyone else considering making EC.

There used to be a YouTube vid on how to make.

Kind regards,


Shirley

I mostly make beer but done a few ciders and elderflower champagne. I did a quick Google before posting here and saw a champagne recipe I.e. sugar but using cider yeast which didn't look right.
Thinking of doing a 23l batch.

 

[Shirley Bassett]

I’ve just searched YouTube and “homebrew mick” is the fellow that makes the turbo elderflower cider. I think he’s been on the **** before he starts and in the first few minutes gets his next pint on the go.

i use the water vessels that he does for brewing in. I snipped the flower heads off as I thought the whole head wouldn’t come back out of the brewing vessel. I also read that the greenery had a cyanide based compound within it, so that’s another reason why I kept it to a minimum.

VW911 Thanks for the tip about too much elderflower makes it taste like catpiss. I didn’t have that problem with 20 heads in 18 litres.

If this year’s turns out like cat **** I’ll drink it when I’ve lost my sense of taste through COVID.

 

[Leon103]

I made an elderflower cider kit many years ago. It tasted of cats ****. I kept a dozen bottles for about 2 years and they turned out amazing.

 

[Richard.]

I used to work for a cider company, and we used to infuse the already fermented cider with both fresh, and dried flowers overnight.

I have tasted one or two commercial elderflower ciders. I don't know the methods they used, but I would guess it was the above method of adding the elderflower flavour after the cider was finished. I think this misses out on the potential magic of fermenting elderflowers in that they can produce a lot of higher/ deeper flavours from being fermented.

 

[Shirley Bassett]

I’ve now started to prime my bottles with Lidl Apple Juice.

I aim for 5g of sugar per 500ml bottle. The juice contains 11g of sugar in 100ml, so I used 45ml of juice added to each bottle, via a graduated syringe, before siphoning in the fermented cider.

The juice mixes in as the cider fills the bottle.

The advantage of this method is that with an 18 litre batch you get to add 36 x 45ml = 1620ml of AJ, which gives you 3 extra bottles.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Mangrove jacks do a elderflower and lime cider and that was underwhelming to say the least. If I get elderflowers I make elderflower champagne, if I wanted it a bit appley or cidery just top up with cider. Then you have a combination of drinks.

 

[Shirley Bassett]

Yes I too have tried the MJ Elderflower Cider, and was not impressed with it. The Magnum Elderflower is even poorer.

I left last years Elderflower champagne in the garage for 12 months and the two bottles I’ve tried so far are pretty tasteless. I‘ll try your suggestion and try to liven it up with some cider.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Next time you make some could try adding say 1.5g of sod met to 23 litres before bottling. My wine kits suggest this as an option if you are keeping the wine for longer than 3 months to help preserve taste and aroma.
I have been underwhelmed by the two mangrove jacks kits I made. The other was a stout and not special. I dislike the packaging, very difficult to get into those bags to read the instructions without slicing open the bag of extract or concentrate.
The other option I suppose with sparkling stuff is to go off tangent and either make a bucks fizz with a really good orange juice, or make black velvet with a stout, or a champagne cocktail ( brandy, sugar cube and angostura bitters ).

 

[johncrobinson]

The cats**** thing is down to the individual bushes not the quantities used.
you need to find sweet smelling bushes,You will soon learn to tell the difference.

The ones where the flowers smell unpleasant are the cats**** ones.

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

The cats**** thing is down to the individual bushes not the quantities used.
you need to find sweet smelling bushes,You will soon learn to tell the difference.

The ones where the flowers smell unpleasant are the cats**** ones.

Always pick from eye level