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Went elderberry picking yesterday, and came back with a bucketfull of heads, which worked out about 1.3 kilos of berries. There's plenty more on the trees as well which haven't ripened yet and that's just one of the 3 haunts I've found. Should be a cracker year for elderberry wine!!!

I usually use a fork to get them off the stems, and always use 4lb of fruit to 2.5lb of sugar in stages. Doing this you will often get a malolactic secondary fermentation and you end up with a very velvety semi-sparkling port!

Don't forget elderberry syrup/cordial.. it's very easy to make and great over yoghurt,ice cream etc. or as a refreshing long drink. And if you make too much you can always use it in the Spring to make a wine, convenient as by then you'll probably have a couple of demijohns free after the Autumn glut of winemaking.

Elderberry Port is well worth a go too!
Last year we made it with 1.6kg elderberries, 450g mixed currants (black is fine, but we had lots of white and red too to use up), 450g sloes, 900g Blackberries, 1kg of cherries strained from the cherry brandy, 200ml red grape conc. together with 1kg golden gran. sugar, some b vit, & port yeast.

I too when picking yesterday, now jut prep'ing the elderberries, got the blackberries and other ingredients all weighed up. It will all go in bags ready in the freezer until i can get some yeast!
Good luck!

narmour wrote: Should be a cracker year for elderberry wine!!!

It's going to be the worst year I've ever seen for elderberries here in Scotland With all that rain in July with the Jet Stream in the wrong place all the flowers rotted on the trees. At best there's about a 10th of the usual amount of berries on each stalk. I would've thought the same problem would be down south seeing as they had all that rain in July too...

The crazy thing is I've seen lots of elder trees with flowers on in September! I reckon they got caught out and thought winter had come early in July and now they think it's spring again! What a messed up year!

I was hoping to make 5 gallons of elderberry wine, but I'll be lucky to get a gallon. Fortunately it's a bumper year for blackberries, so I'll just make that instead!

adamaki wrote:The crazy thing is I've seen lots of elder trees with flowers on in September! I reckon they got caught out and thought winter had come early in July and now they think it's spring again! What a messed up year!

If they have any fragrance you could try an elderflower liqueur.