A couple of weeks ago, before all of the Elderflower bushes suddenly went to seed, my lovely husband went out and harvested some elderflower while I had a mardy at home. (Can't remember why, think it was a combination of sleep deprivation and work!)
We used a River Cottage recipe which is just sugar, water, lemon rind and elderflowers. And I forgot to take pictures! Rather than just rely on the natural elderflower yeast, we added additional yeast to ensure that it was a very boozy elderflower Champagne.
We left the demi-john fermenting upstairs in our office for a couple of weeks which was a few days longer than required as Dave was working away, swanning around Germany for a week. Thankfully, while he was there, he collected a Humber of Grolsch style bottles from Heidelberg beer which have been great for storing the Champagne in.
First up was decanting the liquid from the lemon rind and elderflower infused demi-john and we used a ottling wand and the power of gravity to decant into a new, clean and sterile demi-john.
Then we boiled up some delicious sugar water to prime the Elderflower Champagne before bottling.
We mixed the sugar water thoroughly into the Elderflower champagne demi-john and then began bottling. It's a much easier job with an auto stop bottling wand instead of having to use your thumb! My advice would be to invest in one of these (it only flows when you press the wand onto the bottom of the bottle/sink/husband's face etc).
As seen in the picture above, it's also worth getting hold of a bottling tower to make drying the bottles a little easier. Cheap trick, you can also use the plate holders in a dishwasher tray if you have a dishwasher!
Above is the almost finished product. The bottles have been boxed and out into the office on our third floor which has a consistent 18-20 degree centigrade temperature. It's also covered to keep the light (and cats) away from them.
The first bottle should be ready for a taste in about three weeks so we'll let you know how it goes!