# Elderberry wine recipe help



## DaveL (May 22, 2013)

Ok I just found That I have a supply of Elderberries. I've never had an elderberry that I know of and I damn sure never had Elderberry wine. 
What does it taste like? Give me a good recipe please. 
I can also get some blackberries and blue berris., Are they a good mix?


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## Julie (May 22, 2013)

Blackberry and elderberries are a good mix, not sure of the blueberry mix.

I use 4 to 5 pounds per gallon of berries, put the berries in a strainer bag and squeeze once every day. In the meantime, get a batch of niagara going and on day four pull the berries out and put them in the bucket with the niagara, lot of times I make a niagara out of Welches and have your acid up to .80%


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## gird123 (May 22, 2013)

I used julie's recipe. It is very earthy and i felt took a while to age. It is amazing to blend. I added it to a few wines and it greatly improved them. One was a black berry blue berry. I did the niagara and it was great with the berries.


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## gird123 (May 22, 2013)

I will hopefully get to use the same process again this year.


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## saramc (May 22, 2013)

Elderberries tend to be one fruit that benefit and need aging, usually more than a year. And most tend to either like anything containing elderberry or hating it. I vote for making it as a single wine or mead and then even making a 'seconds' batch from the residual fruit from the primary. And then blend these two batches when all is said and done, or add your blue/blackberries to the seconds batch. And oak plus elderberry, amazing.

Also, if you can use a food safe plastic liner inside your primary bucket while you work with the fresh component you will find the cleanup of the 'green goo' is quite painless, as the goo attaches to the plastic bag. Otherwise it attaches like glue to bucket. You use plain Dawn dishwashing liquid, vegetable oil and a bit of warm water to remove the goo. Dried berries do not produce the goo.


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## Downwards (May 22, 2013)

I did a dried elderberry wine. It is REALLY good. I highly recommend it. Wish I could give credit where it is due, but I did a lot of cutting and pasting of things all over the web when I was first getting into wine, and I should have but didn't keep notes of that. 

I also did oak this wine. 

If anybody recognizes this recipe, feel free to claim it. I think it used to be in metric because I can see by my notes that I used a converter. 


elderberry wine
 16 oz Elderberry dried
 16 oz raisins
 3.5 pounds sugar*
 1.5 pounds light brown sugar*
 2 1/8 teaspoons yeast nutrient*
 8.5 quarts boiling water*
1 tablespoon + 1/4 teaspoon pectinase*


Place Elderberries, Sugar & Minced Raisins directly in a brew bucket and pour on boiling water. Dissolve the sugar. Cover and wait until cool (usually 24 hours).  Once the must is at room temperature add Pectinase.  Leave covered for 24 Hours.  Add the yeast & yeast nutrient.  Cover and leave in a warm place (or use brewbelt etc.) to ferment for 3-4 days only. Over this period stir and push down the cap three times a day.  Strain off the liquid into secondary and fit a bung and airlock. When SG reaches 992 and / or fermentation has ceased add one Campden tablet per gallon (also add fermentation stopper at this point if desired). Leave to settle for the rest of the month. Rack. Leave for two months. Rack to storage. Can be drunk 3 months later or left to mature. Tannin profile gradually subsides after the first year but the wine is perfectly drinkable after the initial 3 month aging.


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## cocroach (May 22, 2013)

Downwards, what kind of yeast did you use for this?


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## gird123 (May 22, 2013)

I don't think we removed enough of the stems. We froze in paper bags then shook and it was easy to remove, but we should have removed more.


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## WVMountaineerJack (May 23, 2013)

Your winemaking is about to take a serious step forward. A well made table elderberry would be very similar to a good Chanti. There is a lot of old wives tales about edlerberries out there but its very easy to make wine from them. Are you picking your own? We have found the backing rack grate one of the easiest and fastest ways to pick. The berries are usually low in acid and you should determine the TA level at the start. Being low in acid they mix very well with higher acid fruits like blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and an apple elderberry blend is very popular at one of our local wineries.

One of the issues with elderberries is this waxy stuff that builds up on plastic, just to get it right order, to clean you simple rub it down with vegetable oil to dissolve the wax, then wash away the oil with hot soapy water.

Removing as many stems as possible is good, or pick in a way that minimizes introducing stems like with the baking rack.

Also since they are high in tannins, which is a very good thing, the longer you leave them in the must the more tannins you get, 3 or 4 days is good, 10 days you are going to have a wine that needs to be aged. I like to use a lot of berries, sometimes we macerate the fruit overnight with enzymes and then press them for the juice so we get a very fruity wine without all the tannins. And using the dried ones makes another unique outstanding wine that I think might even be better than the fresh fruit.

Oaked is outstanding. We also add elderberries to anything red to enhance the color and add a little tannins. THe aging thing is personal, we have most of our enjoyable at 6 months and get better and better with age.

We have a lot of elderberry stuff on our webpage that might help you our some, enjoy. WVMJ


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## Turock (May 23, 2013)

Another tip on making a good elderberry is not to pick them when they are red---they need to be midnight black for good flavor. I have 6 bushes here that I planted and I go out every day and only pick the ripe ones and then freeze them until I have all of them harvested which usually takes several weeks.


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## Downwards (May 23, 2013)

cocroach said:


> Downwards, what kind of yeast did you use for this?



I used Pasteur red for this one.


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