Wednesday 18 June 2014

Elderflower Champagne

On such a beautiful sunny weekend it seemed a shame not to get out into the hills around us. It was too warm to go hiking far though so instead we decided to go for more of a stroll and do some foraging. We returned home with a bag of elderflower heads ready for turning into elderflower champagne.


A lot of the best heads were out of reach for me - so I left Joe to it and took charge of the camera instead!


To make Elderflower Champagne you will need:

1 UK Gallon of Water
1.5 lbs Sugar
2 Tbsp's White Wine Vinegar
2 Lemons (sliced)
6 Elderflower heads

Start by boiling the water, sugar and vinegar to dissolve the sugar and to sterilise it all. Leave this to cool until blood temperature.

Just the task for our large grocers scales

While waiting for the liquid to cool remove the elderflowers from the stalks. Some stalk is okay as you will strain this later - but get rid of most of it.


Once the liquid has cooled add the lemons and the elderflowers and leave to steep for 3 days.


Once the three days is up strain the liquid and decant into bottles or a brewing barrel and leave to ferment for 6 weeks. Leave some space at the top for the gasses to expand.

And that's all there is to it. Joe decanted ours into a barrel last night, and we'll have to hope it works because Joe never does things by halves. 



Yes, that's nearly five gallons of elderflower champagne!