{"id":821,"date":"2014-05-26T20:52:40","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T20:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomas.w-p.me.uk\/blog\/?p=821"},"modified":"2014-06-09T11:57:56","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T11:57:56","slug":"elderflower-champagne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomas.w-p.me.uk\/blog\/2014\/05\/elderflower-champagne\/","title":{"rendered":"Elderflower Champagne?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elder<\/a> Elder on the far right[\/caption]<\/p>\n

I have not made elderflower champagne before, but a little bit of research suggested that it was pretty easy.\u00a0 In the end I doubled up a recipe from the River Cottage forums<\/a>, but all the ones I found looked pretty similar.\u00a0 Here is the recipe I used metricised and doubled up:<\/p>\n

9l hot water
\n1.62kg white sugar
\n7 heads of elderflowers
\n2 lemons, sliced thinly
\n30ml white wine vinegar<\/p>\n

Dissolve sugar in water, and leave to get cold; add lemons, flowers and vinegar. Cover loosely with a tea towel and leave for 24 hours. Strain and bottle, try after a fortnight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I saw absolutely no evidence of fermentation in the mixture AT ALL.\u00a0 Maybe I put the elderflowers in when the water was too warm (28\u00b0C) but that seems a bit pessimistic since I found many examples of people saying that there never is any sign of fermentation.\u00a0 This is natural yeast after all (I’d bought some champagne yeast before researching this).<\/p>\n

24 hours after mixing it up I bottled it, and you can see the result below.\u00a0 It looks the right colour and I am very interested to see what happens over then next two weeks.\u00a0 At least I know that my PET bottles won’t explode.<\/p>\n