WOW! Dried elderberry wine!!!

Mind you, the stuff is just now about a month old, but I racked my gallon of dried elderberry wine this weekend and...ooooooh that's gonna be good. Definitely going to start a five-gallon batch as soon as Ed's Apfelwine is out of its carboy. That is going to be a keeper.

And for the rest of the noobs like me on here...it's easy. Easy is good. Dried elderberries can be had from bulk herb sellers online if your LHBS doesn't have them.

Easy AND awesome. Waiting for this to truly be ready is going to be a test of my patience!

What is your recipe? I will also say if you need bulk dried elderberries you can usually find a great price at www.morethanalive.com, a TN based company. I can speak for their berries...far better than what you find at LHBS, at least my LHBS.

I have an elderberry wine and a mead that were exact same recipe, honey vs sugar, same OG..same, same, same. They hit their one year mark the other day. My laptop is currently down, so cannot access recipe but 6oz/gal is in my head. The wine was quite nice, the mead needs to age but that was anticipated. I will backsweeten some wine with elderflower syrup, and some will be bottled dry, and dry oaked.

I want to say Jack Keller has an entry on his blog about dried elderberries and the correlation of the amount of time of fruit extraction vs aging time. It was most interesting.

BTW, flu and cold season is here, nothing like an elderberry syrup on a daily basis, plus you can jazz it up with chocolate and kids of all ages love it. One tbsp twice a day if feeling sickly, one tbsp daily during risky season, or every single day if you so choose.

Congrats on your elderberry!

I took the recipe from The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garey. It's called Refined Elderberry Wine (which it certainly promises to be). For a gallon of wine 2 1/2 lb sugar or 3 lb light honey, 1/4-1/3 lb dried elderberries, and the usual nutrient suspects, with Montrachet.

And yes, elderberry syrup is amazing!!! I was starting a cold or some sort of URI that just would NOT either go ahead and kill me or get busy and finish its course. Before I made the wine, I made the syrup. A good part of my brain was saying "you know this is only an old wives' tale". Wow, those old wives were pretty darn smart, because my bug went away. Tried to come back a few weeks later, hit it with the same treatment, bam. :rockin:

Garey has several wines that are made with stuff that just has to be incredibly good for you. One she calls Liquid Sunshine...carrot and apricot wine. That might just cure death.

Thanks springmom!! I have decided to get the book. Edit...book found on eBay for $4.66 free shipping. I love bargains!

Excellent, I started some elderberry mead about a month ago, I'm glad to hear I can expect good things from it! I think I will start another! I'm using Frontier Co-op elderberries, not expensive really, I think $16 for a 1 lb mylar bag.

I just received a pound of dried elderberries from morethanalive.com. Thank you so much for listing this sight!!! I have told relatives about it also. Scored some hibiscus flowers and flaxseed at a great price. Can not wait to make some dried elderberry wine. Thank you!!!

Our dried elderberry mead I think is the best wine we make, the wife votes for black raspberry mead. The dried elderberries add such a deep rich taste that is well balanced by the honey We add the dried ones in to many of the wines we make for a little extra tanning and color and taste. WVMJ

porcupine73 said:

Excellent, I started some elderberry mead about a month ago, I'm glad to hear I can expect good things from it! I think I will start another! I'm using Frontier Co-op elderberries, not expensive really, I think $16 for a 1 lb mylar bag.

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Try looking on IHerb...I have been using frontier, because MorethanAlive was out the second time around. I think they are $11 but I could be mistaken. Free shipping after $40 at IHerb. I have about 15 gallons of Elderberry/Hibiscus and 5 gallons of Elderberry/Hibiscus/Rose Hip going. I use Concord Grape Juice as a base.