Summer time, seriously one of my strongest associations with summer is elderflowers. I love their smell and i love making wine with these delicious gifts of mother nature. As regular readers, or brewers who only come here for elderflower wine tips, you'll know that i made 20 gallons (120 bottles) last year. And this year was the same.
My plan was to use the quickie wine base, but only use grape juice (no apple juice). However there was a grape juice shortage in the UK. I thought it may have been a local issue, but a friend on the other side of the country had the same problem. The only supermarket stocking it in June was Asda. Not that i'm plugging Asda, my aim is to point you in their direction if the same problem occurs next year. So, as it turned out, i made 10 gallons with only grape juice, and 10 gallons with both apple juice and grape juice. Same as last year then.
Here's this years recipes.
Recipe 1. Elderflower wine. 5 gallons.
5 Litres White Grape Juice. Asda, pressed, long life
5 Litres Red Grape Juice. Asda, pressed, chilled
5 Teaspoon Citric Acid
4 Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient (Tronozymol)
2.9 Kg Sugar
GV5 Yeast
Elderflowers, 3 litres.
OG 1071
Method
Same old same old, you've seen it many times before.
Collect flowers on a dry sunny day. Drop them into a plastic bag and tie it. Leave overnight. Next day shake the bag for 5-10 minutes. Flowers and pollen will drop off the sprays. If your brew isn;t ready for them then put the flowers/pollen in the freezer.
Dissolve sugar in hot water. Pour into fermenting bucket. Add fruit juices. Dissolve citric acid in a little water and add to bucket. Add yeast nutrient and water to make the volume upto 5 gallons. Measure gravity and record it. Stir vigorously or use a whisk. The aim is to get air dissolved in the must cos the yeast needs it at the budding (reproducing) stage. Then add the yeast.
Stir daily, briefly. After about 5-10 days decant into a fermenting barrel under airlock. Add the elderflowers (in muslin bags). Leave it be for a week or so. Adding flowers late is good for 2 reasons.
- The early days of fermentation are very vigorous and it blows-off lots of the delicate elderflower flavours ... straight out of the airlock.
- The secondary fermentation stage is much gentler, and there is alcohol present. So you get better flavour extraction. And that means you need way less elderflowers, which means less time spent collecting and processing them.
After another week or so, when the fermentation has slowed right down, remove the flowers and rack to demi-johns. Then leave it be and in 4-6 weeks it'll be bright, crisp, light, clear and ready to drink. Something like 10-11%ABV. Don't be tempted to make it stronger by adding more sugar, it'll take longer to age and won't be any better quality.
Recipe 2. Elderflower wine. 5 gallons.
The ingredients and quantities are exactly the same as the above recipe. With one exception the method is the same too. The exception is that when i decanted the wine (in recipe 1) into the fermenting barrel is used it's lees to start recipe 2. The lees is essentially just a ready made healthy yeast colony that is raring to get going!
Be sure that you don't add hot liquids to the lees, else it'll probably kill the yeast. And save yourself something like £1.00 in the process! Hey count the pennies and the £££'s take care of themselves.
Recipe 3. Elderflower wine. 5 gallons.
As for recipe 2, i.e. on the lees, but a few little changes, nothing to be confused by tho.
Original Gravity (OG) 1065
Due to not being able to find enough grape juice i used a mixture (50:50) of white grape juice (5 litres) and apple juice (5 litres). The apple juices were 3 litres of Rio D'oro and 2 litres of Fruit Hit. There's nothing special about these brands (well the latter is organic and fairtrade), any apple juice will do as long as it has no artificial additives. Artificial sweeteners will not ferment so if you a juice containing these you'll end up with disgusting sweet wine. Preservatives will probably prevent your wine from fermenting. Whether the juice is pure pressed or from concentrate is only of concern if you're of the opinion that fluoridated water is bad for you. Cos diluted concentrated juices will probably use tap water, i.e. fluoridated. But pure juice won't.
As a result of using apple juice you'll probably want to make another addition. Pectic enzyme (pectolase). Apples contain pectin, and this will make it most unlikely that you'll get a clear wine without some intervention. Pectin hazes are not easy to get rid of. Having said that there will be nothing wrong with the wine anyway, it's just that clear wine is easier on the eye. My pectolase was out of date, so i doubled the usual quantity i use. i used 10 teaspoons of it.
Also as a result of using apple juice i needed to add more sugar. This is because apple juice does not contain as much sugar as grape juice. i used 3.2 kg of sugar.
And finally i used 4 teaspoons of citric acid and 1 teaspoon of tartaric acid. i reckon the apple juice adds a little different flavour compared to grape juice alone. and as citric acid tastes like lemon juice i dropped some and added the clean tasting tartaric instead. It's the dominant acid in grape juice.
Recipe 4. Elderflower wine. 5 gallons.
As for recipe 3 but with 3.4 kg sugar added to raise the original gravity a little, to 1071.
BUT!!!! Something happened which resulted in an unintentional experiment. I forgot to take the elderflowers out of the secondary fermentation barrel when i went on holiday. It was some 5 weeks later that i removed them. and then another 2 weeks passed before i racked the wine. I feared that i had spoiled it with my forgetfulness. But I'm pleased to say that all worked out fine. This last batch has been ready to drink for 2 weeks and it's just fine. It was started on 30th June.
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