Re: Alcoholic Elderflower Champagne
Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 12:02 pm
Reading this discussion, half the participants seem to be experts and the other complete beginners. I’m a bit of both being a keen country wine maker but never elderflower till this year. I have just tried out Andy Hamilton’s recipe, but with 5 pints of elderflowers and a 5 gallon bucket and this morning it is bubbling away quite merrily. I thought I’d add a few observations from my previous experience, some of which have been touched on by other contributors. The hedgerows here in West Sussex are laden with elderflowers right now so there’s still time to start.
Flowers.
The first batch I picked during the recent rain had next to no fragrance. The next lot picked on a sunny afternoon 2 days later were quite pungent. Logically this must strongly determine the final flavour.
Hygiene
Absent from Andy’s Grauniad article was the golden rule of winemaking – absolute cleanliness. Your perfect environment for microbial life is just as attractive to every other mould, fungus and bacterium. Traditional cider makers and country wine makers simply rely on the natural wild yeast on the fruit or on the walls and old equipment and so can’t sterilise. Because Andy’s recipe uses introduced yeast, you can. So no more ropiiness/slime/mousiness.
Clean everything before you use it with VWP Cleaner Steriliser at a pound a pot from ebay, it’s the stuff designed for professional food preparation.
Add 1 campden tablet per gallon. Basically this creates a sulphur dioxide which kills the bacteria and wild yeast from your elderflowers. (It also neutralises any chlorine in your water). It adds no flavour and is dissipated well before the wine is ready. Some green folk think adding any chemical to be a bad thing, but using sulphur in winemaking is as old as the craft itself. Historically a sulphur candle was burned inside each wine-barrel before its use each year.
Hydrometer
Basically a glass tube with a weight at the bottom which you drop in your wine to see where it floats. About £3 from ebay. It measures how ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ is your mix – in the jargon, its ‘specific gravity’. Really what it measures is how much sugar is in your solution. As the sugar turns to alcohol, it gets thinner and your hydrometer sinks a bit lower every day. When it stops sinking, fermentation has stopped – either because all the sugar is now converted, or something’s gone wrong.
At the start of my fermentation the s.g. reading is ‘1080’: that is purely a product of Andy’s sugar to water ratio and nothing to do with the elderflowers. In my experience that will create 12-15% alcohol. When all the sugar is gone it will read about 1000 or 998 or so.
Yeast
I always make a starter bottle of fermenting yeast at the same time as adding the yeast to the bucket. It jusy means boiling up some of the sugar in half a bottle of water and adding some yeast to it when cool. The super sugary solution kicks off quicker, however my elderflower mix got bubbling on its own this time.
Different yeasts die off at different strengths of alcohol; this is why Andy recommends champagne yeast. Baker’s / beer/ cider yeast will be killed off below or well below 8% alcohol – leaving you with a sickly sweet wine on Andy’s recipe. Champagne yeast survives up to 12-15%. This is the other reason not to rely on natural yeast – unless you want a very mild drink of course.
Secondary Fermentation
My ‘fizzy’ cider was a bit of a disaster last year. I added too much sugar and many of my beer bottles exploded. Five of my eight cider bottles too. (Luckily they are stored in old WW2 buildings). I’d say less is more and ½ a teaspoon of sugar probably too much. I’m going to use mineral water PET bottles so I can release excess gas over time, which you can’t with beer and champagne tops.
Stop Fermentation
If you don’t want fizzy, but also cloudy, elderflower wine, you can stop the fermentation at the level of sweetness you prefer by adding campden tablets again. To get it crystal clear you can buy ‘finings’such as Kwik Klear, which clogs together the tiny particles so you can strain them out.
Homebrew Equipment
This is what I’d buy as a beginner to maximise your luck from one of the many ebay shops.
• 2 gallon bucket with lid and a rubber grommet plus ‘bubbler’ (keeps bugs out and tells you how its fermenting)
• Tub of VWP Cleaner Steriliser (also to clean old bottles)
• Tub of campden tablets
• Hydrometer
• Fine muslin
• Champagne yeast plus yeast nutrient
Hope this is useful to someone. Raoul
Flowers.
The first batch I picked during the recent rain had next to no fragrance. The next lot picked on a sunny afternoon 2 days later were quite pungent. Logically this must strongly determine the final flavour.
Hygiene
Absent from Andy’s Grauniad article was the golden rule of winemaking – absolute cleanliness. Your perfect environment for microbial life is just as attractive to every other mould, fungus and bacterium. Traditional cider makers and country wine makers simply rely on the natural wild yeast on the fruit or on the walls and old equipment and so can’t sterilise. Because Andy’s recipe uses introduced yeast, you can. So no more ropiiness/slime/mousiness.
Clean everything before you use it with VWP Cleaner Steriliser at a pound a pot from ebay, it’s the stuff designed for professional food preparation.
Add 1 campden tablet per gallon. Basically this creates a sulphur dioxide which kills the bacteria and wild yeast from your elderflowers. (It also neutralises any chlorine in your water). It adds no flavour and is dissipated well before the wine is ready. Some green folk think adding any chemical to be a bad thing, but using sulphur in winemaking is as old as the craft itself. Historically a sulphur candle was burned inside each wine-barrel before its use each year.
Hydrometer
Basically a glass tube with a weight at the bottom which you drop in your wine to see where it floats. About £3 from ebay. It measures how ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ is your mix – in the jargon, its ‘specific gravity’. Really what it measures is how much sugar is in your solution. As the sugar turns to alcohol, it gets thinner and your hydrometer sinks a bit lower every day. When it stops sinking, fermentation has stopped – either because all the sugar is now converted, or something’s gone wrong.
At the start of my fermentation the s.g. reading is ‘1080’: that is purely a product of Andy’s sugar to water ratio and nothing to do with the elderflowers. In my experience that will create 12-15% alcohol. When all the sugar is gone it will read about 1000 or 998 or so.
Yeast
I always make a starter bottle of fermenting yeast at the same time as adding the yeast to the bucket. It jusy means boiling up some of the sugar in half a bottle of water and adding some yeast to it when cool. The super sugary solution kicks off quicker, however my elderflower mix got bubbling on its own this time.
Different yeasts die off at different strengths of alcohol; this is why Andy recommends champagne yeast. Baker’s / beer/ cider yeast will be killed off below or well below 8% alcohol – leaving you with a sickly sweet wine on Andy’s recipe. Champagne yeast survives up to 12-15%. This is the other reason not to rely on natural yeast – unless you want a very mild drink of course.
Secondary Fermentation
My ‘fizzy’ cider was a bit of a disaster last year. I added too much sugar and many of my beer bottles exploded. Five of my eight cider bottles too. (Luckily they are stored in old WW2 buildings). I’d say less is more and ½ a teaspoon of sugar probably too much. I’m going to use mineral water PET bottles so I can release excess gas over time, which you can’t with beer and champagne tops.
Stop Fermentation
If you don’t want fizzy, but also cloudy, elderflower wine, you can stop the fermentation at the level of sweetness you prefer by adding campden tablets again. To get it crystal clear you can buy ‘finings’such as Kwik Klear, which clogs together the tiny particles so you can strain them out.
Homebrew Equipment
This is what I’d buy as a beginner to maximise your luck from one of the many ebay shops.
• 2 gallon bucket with lid and a rubber grommet plus ‘bubbler’ (keeps bugs out and tells you how its fermenting)
• Tub of VWP Cleaner Steriliser (also to clean old bottles)
• Tub of campden tablets
• Hydrometer
• Fine muslin
• Champagne yeast plus yeast nutrient
Hope this is useful to someone. Raoul