Elder-flower cider?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

thelema5

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 27, 2015
Messages
60
Reaction score
15
Location
The Catskills
I'm thinking of making an elder-flower cider, but I've been unable to find any reliable recipes online- in these forums or elsewhere.

Have any of you worked with dried elder-flower before? How much would you suggest I add per gallon, and at what point during fermentation? Any special tips I should know?

I was thinking no more than a ounce, steamed and tossed into a champagne yeast fermented cider aging in secondary for a couple of weeks... but I really don't have any experience with the plant, so any help would be great!
 
The idea sounds delicious, enough so that I'll be picking up some Elder-flowers from my local Mexican grocery store. My only thought on the recipe is possibly soaking them in vodka instead of steaming to retain flavor, but that's just a guess.
 
I agree that steaming is probably not the best way to go. Elder flowers already lose some flavour to the drying process and I wouldn't want to lose any more by heating them. The vodka approach sounds best. This would let you adjust the amount of elder flavour in a test batch before committing to an amount for the whole batch.
 
Why champagne yeast? Why the use of heat? An ounce of dried flowers makes a very flavor-rich elderflower wine. What would be the problem of using a gallon of apple juice in place of water and so ferment the cider with the elderflowers in the primary. Should have enough sugar to produce a cider with about 6 % ABV . I would use either 71B or perhaps US -05 for the yeast.
 
Thanks for the ideas, folks! I think the consensus is to sanitize the elder with vodka rather than steam, which seems to be very sensible.

Why champagne yeast? Why the use of heat? An ounce of dried flowers makes a very flavor-rich elderflower wine. What would be the problem of using a gallon of apple juice in place of water and so ferment the cider with the elderflowers in the primary.

I've found that champagne yeast tends to produce more floral flavors in dry ciders than others I've used, which I think will complement the elder flower well. I'm not sure what you mean about heat and water (unless you mean for steam sanitizing), but I usually add non-fermentable flavorings to secondary because it's easier to control experimental recipes.

For experimental recipes I like to ferment a larger 6 gallon batch of my base cider (unflavored) through primary, and then rack it down into 6 smaller batches, with flavorings added, for secondary. This lets me tweek the recipe 6 different ways to compare results.
 
wine makers try to avoid heat - and use K-meta (or Campden tablet, sulfur dioxide being the active ingredient) to kill any wild yeast. K-meta will evaporate within 24 hours so you pitch your yeast 24 hours after you have added a campden tablet to the must. No steam, no heat, no added vodka.
 
I agree with thelma5 & 1bottlerocket. If you wait till the end you can see what it will taste like before you flavor the whole batch. Vodka is a fine way to extract the flavor, you could also boil some in sugar water and make a syrup to add as bottlerocket suggests. If you like the results scale up. But if you go the syrup route make sure your base cider is stable, unless you wanted to use that sugar as a primer.
 
Back
Top