elderflowe champagne recipe

[sexysouthwest]

i am trying to get the best elderflower champagne recipe any ideas

[crafty john]

i am trying to get the best elderflower champagne recipe any ideas

Hi, This is the recepie that I use

400 grams elderflower heads (just the flowers no stalks)
6 unwaxed lemons (washed)
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 kilo sugar
1 pack of Champagne yeast
yeast nutrient
20 litres water ( treat with 1/2 a campden tablet before adding to brew)

Take the flowers and bunch them up then rub them gently in to the palm of your hand to remvoe all the florets, add to FV
grate the zest of the lemons into FV, pour 2 .5 litres of boiling water over flowers,add sugar, juice of lemons (make sure you discard the pips) add vinegar and stir to disolve sugar, top up to 5 gallons with the treated water and stir, add nutrient stir again, sprinkle yeast and cover for 15 mins then give it a good stiring, job done

[FAIRYJUICE]

Bottle when it's going off??? Priming the bottle???

I'm new to this and I've got 2 different brews on the go - when should I bottle it - I'm trying the Hugh Whit one - 'm 2 days in not much is happening so I've added some yeast - it says bottle in 4 days time.

I'm also trying a 24 hour one (4 heads, 10 litres 2 lemons 1 kg sugar - wine vinager all in bucket for 24 hours then sieve and bottle)??? though the sugar is still undissolved at the bottom of the bucket and I'm not convinced anything will happen by the morning?

So to make any of these recipes more alcoholic do we just chuck in more sugar?

How will i know when it's slowing down? Once bottled if using PET should I regularly release the pressure or will this spoil the final result?

Please help!

Many thanks

[crafty john]

Bottle when it's going off??? Priming the bottle???

I'm new to this and I've got 2 different brews on the go - when should I bottle it - I'm trying the Hugh Whit one - 'm 2 days in not much is happening so I've added some yeast - it says bottle in 4 days time.

I'm also trying a 24 hour one (4 heads, 10 litres 2 lemons 1 kg sugar - wine vinager all in bucket for 24 hours then sieve and bottle)??? though the sugar is still undissolved at the bottom of the bucket and I'm not convinced anything will happen by the morning?

So to make any of these recipes more alcoholic do we just chuck in more sugar?

How will i know when it's slowing down? Once bottled if using PET should I regularly release the pressure or will this spoil the final result?

Please help!

Many thanks

You should take an SG reding before you bottle, I personally wouldn't bottle until the SG is at least 1.000 then add 1/2 teaspoon sugar per pint. if you do it like hugh says you could get bottle bombs, it's a bit hit and miss following most recepies iv'e seen because each brew depending on temperature, yeast, residual sugar content etc can vary a great deal. If you use a scientific approach you can control the amount of CO2 being produced in the bottle.

Yes more sugar makes more alcohol.

I have a batch on the go and I am going to wait until all fermantation has ceased then I am going to prime at a rate of 170 grams sugar per 5 gallons and bottle in chamagne bottles.

[Tequilla6]

That was the real big problem I had when I was looking for an Elderflower recipe, lots of mumbo Jumbo and poor advice and techniques. It's a wonder H&S haven't slapped danger notices over the River Cottage recipes and their Ilk.

[mcbrew]

Hi,

I have used the recipe from River Cottage and found it to be very good. This year I decided to reduce the sugar by 25% and 50% in respective brews. We found it a bit too sweet last year. The brew with 25% less sugar tasted very nice and still had a real fizz. I normally use swing top one litre bottle from Ikea. These are less than £2 and are good value for money. I sometimes bottle in 500Ml beer bottles and cap them. This means I can easily release the pressure when I come to opening them.

I don't use PET bottles after my experience with ginger beer and even screw tops can blow off. I keep my bottles in the shed and leave them for 6 weeks. We kept a bottle for almost 10 months. It still had a lovely fizz and it tasted smoother and a little more alcoholic.

Finally when Hugh says a pinch of yeast use just a pinch and no more.

[Tequilla6]

I would like to come across as informative and not negative but sometimes it hard to gauge how a person will read your message as there are so many ways the written word can be misconstrued, so apologies in advance if I come across in any way other than informative. I'm trying my best.

Your reply to the thread proves my point exactly.

I don't use PET bottles after my experience with ginger beer and even screw tops can blow off

Why not they are made for the storage of highly carbonated drinks so should be perfect. PET soda bottles are typically rated to withstand at least 150 psi without defects and as the standard Cola is around 100psi I believe and maybe the standard Champagne is a little higher. So for a plastic bottle to explode or for it to force the top off the amount of secondary fermentation to occur within the bottle is concerning. The question I would ask is for any recipe like this what is the Original Gravity what is the expected final gravity and at what gravity should I bottle . If HFW would supply this kind of information then his recipes along with many other poorly defined recipes I see especially with carbonated recipes, they would be a lot safer to use. At least PET is plastic I would not want shards of flying glass anywhere near me personally.

And finally when Hugh says a pinch of yeast use just a pinch and no more, he is talking out of his backside. The amount of yeast bares no relationship to the final carbonation of the brew. In fact in under pitching yeast you run the risk of not having enough to give a nice vigorous start, leave the Must or Wort prone to other bacterial infections and wild yeasts whilst your desired yeast gets itself established and you may still end up with undesired byproducts from excessive yeast growth as opposed to actual task you require which is alcohol creation.

Guide to Yeast Cultures

If a recipe does not talk about estimated gravities especially at bottling it's a bad recipe in my opinion and should be viewed with mistrust Is it a wonder so many people have bad experiences with home brewing

[crafty john]

I would like to come across as informative and not negative but sometimes it hard to gauge how a person will read your message as there are so many ways the written word can be misconstrued, so apologies in advance if I come across in any way other than informative. I'm trying my best.

Your reply to the thread proves my point exactly.

I don't use PET bottles after my experience with ginger beer and even screw tops can blow off

Why not they are made for the storage of highly carbonated drinks so should be perfect. PET soda bottles are typically rated to withstand at least 150 psi without defects and as the standard Cola is around 100psi I believe and maybe the standard Champagne is a little higher. So for a plastic bottle to explode or for it to force the top off the amount of secondary fermentation to occur within the bottle is concerning. The question I would ask is for any recipe like this what is the Original Gravity what is the expected final gravity and at what gravity should I bottle . If HFW would supply this kind of information then his recipes along with many other poorly defined recipes I see especially with carbonated recipes, they would be a lot safer to use. At least PET is plastic I would not want shards of flying glass anywhere near me personally.

And finally when Hugh says a pinch of yeast use just a pinch and no more, he is talking out of his backside. The amount of yeast bares no relationship to the final carbonation of the brew. In fact in under pitching yeast you run the risk of not having enough to give a nice vigorous start, leave the Must or Wort prone to other bacterial infections and wild yeasts whilst your desired yeast gets itself established and you may still end up with undesired byproducts from excessive yeast growth as opposed to actual task you require which is alcohol creation.

Guide to Yeast Cultures

If a recipe does not talk about estimated gravities especially at bottling it's a bad recipe in my opinion and should be viewed with mistrust Is it a wonder so many people have bad experiences with home brewing

Well Said

[RabMaxwell]

i am trying to get the best elderflower champagne recipe any ideas

Hi, This is the recepie that I use

400 grams elderflower heads (just the flowers no stalks)
6 unwaxed lemons (washed)
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 kilo sugar
1 pack of Champagne yeast
yeast nutrient
20 litres water ( treat with 1/2 a campden tablet before adding to brew)

Take the flowers and bunch them up then rub them gently in to the palm of your hand to remvoe all the florets, add to FV
grate the zest of the lemons into FV, pour 2 .5 litres of boiling water over flowers,add sugar, juice of lemons (make sure you discard the pips) add vinegar and stir to disolve sugar, top up to 5 gallons with the treated water and stir, add nutrient stir again, sprinkle yeast and cover for 15 mins then give it a good stiring, job done

Hello Crafty john i was out & picked some Elderflowers today for using in a pale ale but wasn't sure how to remove the flowers without still having some little bits of stalks.Does this mean i will need to give them a little rub before adding them.Will some little bits of stalk cause flavour problems .Cheers

[crafty john]

i am trying to get the best elderflower champagne recipe any ideas

Hi, This is the recepie that I use

400 grams elderflower heads (just the flowers no stalks)
6 unwaxed lemons (washed)
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 kilo sugar
1 pack of Champagne yeast
yeast nutrient
20 litres water ( treat with 1/2 a campden tablet before adding to brew)

Take the flowers and bunch them up then rub them gently in to the palm of your hand to remvoe all the florets, add to FV
grate the zest of the lemons into FV, pour 2 .5 litres of boiling water over flowers,add sugar, juice of lemons (make sure you discard the pips) add vinegar and stir to disolve sugar, top up to 5 gallons with the treated water and stir, add nutrient stir again, sprinkle yeast and cover for 15 mins then give it a good stiring, job done

Hello Crafty john i was out & picked some Elderflowers today for using in a pale ale but wasn't sure how to remove the flowers without still having some little bits of stalks.Does this mean i will need to give them a little rub before adding them.Will some little bits of stalk cause flavour problems .Cheers

Just take the heads in one hand and rub them in the palm of your other hand over a bucket and they will fall off dead easy, you still need to look out for any stalks that fall off though, because they might give your brew a bitter taste.

[RabMaxwell]

Cheers Will do i thought i was making hard work of it.

[onelegout]

That was the real big problem I had when I was looking for an Elderflower recipe, lots of mumbo Jumbo and poor advice and techniques. It's a wonder H&S haven't slapped danger notices over the River Cottage recipes and their Ilk.

I totally agree. The original river cottage recipe was simply wrong, and if people followed it it would definitely cause exploding bottles - several people reported the bottoms blowing out of their glass swingtop bottles!
The recipe has now been changed to 700g of sugar instead of 2kg which makes MUCH more sense. I diluted mine and it's fantastic now
Here's my recipe:

3.5 Gallons water
30 large heads of elderflower
the juice of 4 lemons, one of which should be quartered and chucked in with the elderflower after juicing
2000g of sugar
two tablespoons of cheap white wine
one tablespoon of cider vinegar
Pale ale yeast or bakers yeast.

Disolve sugar in 1 gallon of water
chuck it in a sanitised fermentation bucket
Add 2.5 gallons cold tap water
add elderflower, lemons, vinegar and wine
cool to blood temp and add rehydrated yeast or a bit of the yeast cake from a beer.

Leave it to ferment with an airlock
once it reaches 1.010, bottle with priming sugar as usual going for 2.8 volumes of Co2

[FAIRYJUICE]

Hello again

I'm trying two recipes - one is the original Hugh Wit one - I bottled it all in champagne bottles except one which ended up in a 2 litre PET lemonade bottle - this one has gone rock hard and bulging - I've had to release the pressure twice a day - will this effect the final brew? More importantly the glass ones - will these explode? I've put them in the shed - I can't relistcally release any pressure from these - should I chill to stop the fermentation - will this work - what will happen to the final taste?

If I leave what is likely to happen when I come to open them - if they last that long? In the meantime I've wrapped them in clingfilm in the hope that any exploding glass is contained - I gave one bottle to my Dad for fathers day! Ooooopps.

HELP - Look forward to your replies shortly.

Finally what's all this about measuring it's gravity or what ever - how do I do this?

Can anyone provide an idoits guide recipe/instructions from start to finish (from picking to drinking) that has a good alcohol content - more than Lambrusco!!!! around 10-12% and won't blow up my home!!!.

Many thanks

[Tequilla6]

There are plenty of reasonable recipes on the forums already, as to a hydrometer its one of these things.



This one is in some beer I just made and it shows the relative "weight" of a liquid "Specifically my beer" compared to plain water, in this case it reads 1.041. Because of the amount of desolved sugar still in the beer it is heavier than plain water. In brewing beer we wait until the SG reading is between 1.008 and 1.016 depending on the beer and wait for the reading to become stable over 2 days. Once we achieve this then we can bottle our beers and in doing so we add a small amount of sugar (5gms typically) solution to each bottle to start the fermentation of our beer off again. As we are sealing the bottles this time the Yeast converts this sugar to alcohol and the by product Co2 is trapped in the bottle carbonating our beers. In this way we are confident that we will have no bottle bombs as we have controlled the amount of Co2 that will be produced and we know that the carbonation is not going to be too great, Typically beers are not carbonated over 25 psi (pounds per square inch) this being a typical lager. With Champagne the carbonation can be higher, about 90 psi similar to Coke and fizzy drinks.

To use a hydrometer see This article here which is specifically aimed at Wine. The hydrometer is fairly cheap and can be purchased at all LHBS, Wilko's and other shops that have a small selection of wine and beer making paraphernalia. You can even order a Hydrometer on E-Bay if you want. This one gives a guide as to when you may consider stopping the fermentation using campden tablets and when you should think about bottling.

The safest way to carbonate is to let the fermentation complete and add additional sugar in my opinion. However some brewers and wine makers know in advance by experience how low their Wort or Must will ferment down to and they wait until the Wort or Must is 2-3 points above the final gravity and bottle without adding any additional sugars, and using the know drop in gravity to carbonate their beers and wines. But as I said you need experience and confidence of the recipe and final gravity to be able to do this. HFW and other recipes bottle prior to primary fermentation finishing on a blind whim (usually based around a time in days) and this results in the generous amount of bottle bombs we hear about in brewing.

Hope that helps

PS Have a look at some of the Posts under "Brewdays". You will see detailed info on how people brew their beers and wine (There are some, but the general methods apply to both) you will also see most will talk about OG and SG and there priming techniques.

[FAIRYJUICE]

Tequilla6 Thank you

A couple of extra questions then - always eh!!

1. How do I know when primary fermentation has finish - one batch the HTW one was bubbling away when I bottled it the other mix off a BBC website wasn't really doing a great deal.

2. On subsequent batches should I wait for all the fizzing to finish before bottling.

3. Also the do you think I have a ticking time bomb with the HTW batch in sparkling wine bottles seeing as I'm letting off the pressure in the PET bottle twice a day at the moment?

4. Should I be trying to stop the fermentation by chilling avoiding exploding bottles?

5. Any other web reading you would recommend for idiots like me!!

Thank you - will try at batch with the recipe above tonight.

Best wishes

Fairyjuice (wish I'd chosen a different username now!! Ha!)