First Crack At Elderflower Champagne

[JammyBStard]

Tis the time of year and I've never done it before so here goes:

Slightly modified version of the recipe found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... -champagne

For 4 Gallons:
60 Flower Heads
900g of White Grape concentrate
2kg Sugar
6 Leamons
Yeast Nutrient
Youngs Champgne Yeast

I'm going to add another 1.6kg of sugar going to secondry giving an effective OG of 1.092
ABV should be 10-12%

Smells great to start with!

[andy hamilton]

Nice tweaks, was going to suggest similar. I think using a secondary makes quite a difference with elderflower champagne recipes.

[JammyBStard]

Its going into secondary tomorrow, I had a little taste yesterday (licked the spoon after rousing the yeast) and It tastes fresh and light, i think it's going to be good.

[JammyBStard]

1 week into secondary, looking good!

[DeadFall]

I'm jealous, between the weather being lousy and being busy I seem to have missed the season for elderflowers. I won't get time this weekend and probably not next weekend, by that time I expect them to have gone. Might take next Friday off work and go picking...

[boingy]

After two successful years of elderflower champagne we've thrown caution to the wind and gone for elderflower wine instead. It smells good but it's far too early to say whether our decision was a good one!

[cosmondo]

Hi,

I know you're new at this, as this is your 1st time making it...

but, what are you going to put it all in?

Are ordinary wine bottles ok?

Will the Champagne corks fit into ordinary wine bottles & do you need them?

How does the secondary fermintation help & how do you go about it?

The Guardian recipe you've linked doesn't cover any of this & I'm more of a newbie than yourself, it specifies champagne bottles!

Sorry, it's so confusing - there is loads of recipes & this one sounds promising.

I hope your good self, or someone else can point me in the right direction - I want to make a large batch & I still have time, as the season is slightly later here in Perthshire, we've still lots of flowers which are still in bud form, although waiting for a sunny morning to pick them may be a problem!

Thanks in advance for any replies & good luck with your project, I hope it's a success.

[AnthonyUK]

If you want it fizzy you'll need a bottle that can hold the pressure which regular wine bottles can't.
This could be Champagne/Cava/Prosecco bottles or empty fizzy drink bottles (PETs).
The plastic wine stoppers are best too if fizzy as they can be secured with a wire cage.
You almost certainly won't be able to fit traditional mushroom corks as it is quite specialised.

[JammyBStard]

As above!
Definitely not ordinary wine bottles, they're only built for still liquids like wine. Anything with fizz and they'll explode.
I'm going to use 500ml swing top glass bottles, like a big Grolsh bottle. If you're stuck use PET bottles.

[cosmondo]

Thanks for the info on the bottles, think I'll try the local hotels, if they have any empties to give me.

I plan to make gifts from the bottles of champagne, for the birth of my 1st child in October - the plastic bottles will do fine for myself though.

I've tried searching for info on the secondary fermintation, without much luck...

.. would anyone be able to point me in the direction of a good tutorial regarding secondary fermintation for this purpose?

Thanks.

[cosmondo]

Found this on that Guardian link re: what I think is the secondary fermentation...

Any thoughts?

If you didn’t have a hydrometer the way that you would go about it is: Ferment the wine out and kill the fermentation with sodium metabisulphite. You could then rack this off to clear the wine even further and anyway you need to give the sodium metabisulphite 24 hours to disappear from the wine before you go to the next step.

In the next step you make up a new starter made from some of the wine, a little sugar, and some of the yeast and put a teaspoon of this into each bottle- then bottle up as normal. The Champaign yeast is one of the more robust yeasts and can cope with high levels of alcohol but you could use a High Alcohol yeast to make results more certain.

Behind the scenes, which you won’t know without a hydrometer, you have fermented out to at least 0.95 specific gravity (SG)- that is ‘lighter’ than pure water (which is 1 SG) and that is probably where John’s recipe would end up. He just lets the wine finish in the bottle whereas we have let it finish in the demi-john ending up with ‘flat’ wine.
By adding that very small amount of starter and then bottling we intend to cause a new fermentation to start in the bottle, the only purpose being to add the bubbles to the wine- when the yeast has used up the sugar it will die, just as in John’s method.

My suggestion is actually how a lot of people go about it but John’s method is a damn sight easier and only has the small potential drawback of the amount of yeast in the bottle.

Now I’ve come over all ‘mountain man & king of the hedgerow’ I’ll spoil it by saying you could just ferment the wine out (in other words the fermentation has stopped) and rack it off to completely clear it. Then stick it through a Soda-Stream machine as needed.
The only real difference is the bubbles will be bigger- although that is a very real difference it isn’t a deal breaker.

[JammyBStard]

Hi,

How does the secondary fermintation help & how do you go about it?

Hi Cos

There's a few answers to that. I'm a beer brewer, so i use beer brewing terms!

Firstly be very wary of the term "Secondary" lots of people have different takes on this and it's frequently misused and misunderstood, but the way I see it there's Primary and secondary fermentation and there are Primary and secondary fermentors/fermentation vessels (FV) and they are different things!
Primary fermentation is the conversion of sugar into alcohol, in this case this will be happening right up until it's been in the bottle and the yeast has used up all the sugar.
Secondary fermentation is giving the yeast time to clean up and flocculate (drop out) before serving (better to call it conditioning really). In this case this will happen mainly in the bottle once the sugars used up (The beer term would be bottle conditioning).

The primary Fermentor was the bucket with the elderflower and lemons, racking to the secondary fermentor was moving it to the demijohn.
When I said "I'm going to add another 1.6kg of sugar going to secondary" I was talking about the secondary fermentor. The fact I added sugar at this stage might be misleading. There are good reasons for doing it this in certain circumstances like brewing very high gravity beer with sugar, or adding fruit to beer, or yeast health. But in this case I did it for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I was splitting the batch between 4 demijohns I wanted to kick of another strong fermentation and healthy yeast growth so there was a good amount of yeast cells in each fv. But mainly I'm afraid it's because I didn't have enough sugar on the day, and it wouldn’t hurt to add it to the secondary so that's what I did (Sorry).

Hope this helps

[cosmondo]

^^^^ Cheers for that Jammy, I'm feeling much better now in my understanding of how to go about this.

I think I can get a move on & copy your method/recipe (before the season is over). I can begin Primary & Secondary Fermintation (see what I did there? Lol) & hopefully I'll then have plenty of time to work out the rest....

Generally this means, I'm just hoping that you'll finish off your wee tutorial on how long to wait, final readings etc & also your method of adding fizz.

As I said earlier, there is soo much information, recipes & differing methods of making elderflower Champagne out there on the internet & if you've never really made wine before it's quite confusing.

I've made quite a lot of beer kits, but they come with instructions, so are quite easy - I've done a few TC's but to be honest that's quite hit & miss on the flavour/drinkability front (hence, why I'm worried & confused about this attempt) & my one attempt at sparkling TC ended out with 3 bottle bombs from 5 in the garage!

Anyway thanks for taking the time to explain, I'm sure others will also find it helpful - I certainly do!

[JammyBStard]

I forgot to say congratulations!

The fizz comes from bottling before the fermentation has finished when the gravity is 1.010. as the yeast continues to ferment the residual sugars it produces CO2 which in the closed sysem of the bottle builds up pressure and dissolves into the wine. when you open the bottle the pressure drops and the CO2 boils out of the wine creating the bubbles!
I'll keep posting!

[cosmondo]

I've only got pure white grape juice, not from concentrate.

I'm thinking maybe put in 2 litres for 4 gallons..?

The Guardian recipe seemed to be quite light - 150ml for 1 gallon.

Anyone got any ideas?

I'm at the sugar over the flowers stage, so not long till I go for the primary ferment & I ain't got a clue LOL.

Read Jammy's recipe wrong & thought it said 9L of grape juice, instead of 900g of concentrate.