Elderberry Mead

[mooney]

Not beenon herefor awhile. After last year's sucsess with this one here it is again. This time my Elderberry trees gave me 6kg within reach without ladders and dam it took ages to pick them off the stems. A good 3 hours. Left them over night soaking in a Campden solution. Been lazy and chucked them in here and went over them with a stick blender and added 3kg of dissolved honey. Just cheap stuff from Costco. Only problem is most of my mead making has involved bottling and drinking of late so I only have this white wine yeast, bread yeast and champagne yeast. I'm fed up with champaign yeast as it takes every thing to dry. I'm not even sure what I'll top this up to I have 3 spare 5l demijohns after bottling ginger mead tonight so I'll probably go up to 4 gallons on my bucket for pressing out the fruit and see how it goes. Will report back with an sg in a bit if I can get one in all the fruit.
Critisidm welcome.

 

[mooney]

So sg was 70, wee bit low so chucked in another half tub of honey. Up to 80 and pitched my generic white wine yeast. Was tempted by just using bread yeast. After doing a jaom I was so impressed I have been using it for a few meads with great results.
So I'll need to press the fruit out in a week and this experament will be good when the elderberrys are ripe again next year.

 

[WVMJ]

There are much easier ways to pick elderberries, some of them we have on our webpage and yourtube. A little oak might make a difference. WVMJ

 

[mooney]

Ye I have some Oak chip kicking about so I'll give that a bash later on in the process. Thanks I looked up a few ways of picking them. I don't feel I wasted too much time. No freezer space for freezing them and no will to build any thing to sort them. They are fizzing away nicely now when I punch down the cap. chucked in a few more nutrients.

 

[WVMJ]

Mooney, never any time wasted picking elderberries! We just like to pick a lot at a time. A cooling rack mesh like they cool cookies on over a bucket is very hard to build WVMJ

 

[mooney]

Well I might try it for next year's batch. Might have a bottle of last year's batch tonight. Racked to secondary today and pressed the fruit as best I could. Got 3 of 4.5l demijohn and a 1l growler for topping up at racking. It's at 1.010 after a week and tastes pretty good. Was a bit worried during the week there because when I was degassing and adding nutrients it was giving off a bit of a bad smell. bit sulfer bit ammonia i dunno? No idea what it was but it's cleared up now.

 

[mooney]

Just to fill in this batch has recently been bottled and I think the 6kg of berries was too much. Far too mutch tannin and stomach upset. This batch is being used in sauces for steak.

 

[Naraic]

I have some elderberry wine where they made a syrup out of the berry's and strained out the seeds which was nice. Elderberry seeds contain arsenic maybe why you had upset stomach , It may be a myth but I heard people have died for eating too may elderberry's

 

[mooney]

I think that may have been the problem. In hindsight I would have heated the elderberries. As I made a 3 gallon batch which I split into 3 x 1 gallon demi John's it was only one of the 3 that gave me problems. Which what most likely the last to be raked off of primary. But the whole batch has far too mutch tannin in it and is better suited to cooking a bolagnes or purple clothes dye.

 

[k-moe]

Elderberries need to be cooked in order to be safe for consumption.

 

[Rayi]

Hey I pick a lot of elderberrys. I cut off the whole head then hold onto the stem and smack it around in a 5 gallon pail a few times. The ripe berrys fall off and the green ones get tossed. When I make mead I use the sweet mead yeast. It cost more and is a pain some times to get started but it's worth the pain

 

[WVMJ]

We like the backing rack on top of a bucket a little bit better, then we fill the bucket up with cold water and it flushes away the bugs. Beating them on the side of the bucket I always thought I lost a bit much juice from the ripest ones. WVMJ

Hey I pick a lot of elderberrys. I cut off the whole head then hold onto the stem and smack it around in a 5 gallon pail a few times. The ripe berrys fall off and the green ones get tossed. When I make mead I use the sweet mead yeast. It cost more and is a pain some times to get started but it's worth the pain

 

[Chris_The_Rogue]

From what I found when reaserching for my own elderberry recipe:
Ripe elderberries are not poisonous. The unripe berries, stems, and I wanna say flowers are slightly toxic. Will upset your stomache but i don't belive they can do much more than that. And yes cooking berries and flowers will reduce or remove the effect.The issue with the seeds is that if you crush the berries prior to fermentation, they can produce a hard to clean goop during fermentation. Or so ive read.

 

[WVMJ]

Please share any references saying the flowers are toxic, vs just guessing. Lots of recipes using the flowers in tonics, no heating involved. There is also no evidence you get green goo from the seeds. People harvest the seeds for planting using a food processor so I dont think the average winemaker crushing their berries are going to break many seeds. WVMJ

From what I found when reaserching for my own elderberry recipe:
Ripe elderberries are not poisonous. The unripe berries, stems, and I wanna say flowers are slightly toxic. Will upset your stomache but i don't belive they can do much more than that. And yes cooking berries and flowers will reduce or remove the effect.The issue with the seeds is that if you crush the berries prior to fermentation, they can produce a hard to clean goop during fermentation. Or so ive read.

 

[Chris_The_Rogue]

Please share any references saying the flowers are toxic, vs just guessing. Lots of recipes using the flowers in tonics, no heating involved. There is also no evidence you get green goo from the seeds. People harvest the seeds for planting using a food processor so I dont think the average winemaker crushing their berries are going to break many seeds. WVMJ

I no longer have the links from when I was looking into elderberries. I was uncertain about the flowers when I did the previous post. Now that ive done a quick refresher on google I can see I was wrong on that one. As for the elderberry goo, i found several pages on it but no hard answers. Most of the articals specilated that its exposed seeds durring fermentation that cause it, but not for every species of elderberry.