Hello and help! Elderflower Champagne advice please

Hi all

I'm just getting the home-brew bug, and am starting off with what seemed like an easy one - elderflower champage.

It looks easy enough to bodge one's way to a something palatable, but googling around it sounds like the alcohol content is pretty pathetic, at about 2%.

I've got a big fermentation bin, siphoning stuff, loads of PET bottles from 1l fizzy drinks and sparkling wine yeast. Oh, and a hydrometer

This is the recipe I was going to use was the one at http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/657037

It makes 6 litres (I was going to x4 to make 24)

700 g caster sugar
20 heads of elderflower
2 lemons, zested and grated
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
pinch of dried yeast

METHOD

1. Add 4.5 litres of water and the sugar to a very clean bucket, and stir until the sugar has dissolved then add a further 1.5 litres of cold water.

2. Add the elderflower heads to the bucket along with the lemon juice, zest and vinegar. Cover the bucket with a clean muslin and leave in a cool, airy place for 2 days.

3. Check the mixture and if it is not starting to foam add a pinch of yeast and mix again. Cover with the muslin again and leave for another 4 days, allowing the mixture to ferment.

4. Strain the liquid carefully through a sieve lined with muslin and pour into strong glass or plastic bottles with champagne lids. The brew can produce a lot of gas which may cause the bottles to pop or explode so you must let off gas regularly to prevent this from happening.

5. Seal and leave for at least a week before serving chilled. The bottles will keep for a few months in a cool dry place.

OK, questions that spring to mind are:
- Should let it finish fermenting and then prime the bottles with sugar instead?
- Would this make for a stronger product, as well as avoid exploding bottles?
- should I dump the vinegar (sounds weird)
- should I add more sugar to start with, and would this make it stronger?

Thanks very much indeed all - if anyone needs advice in return on building pizza ovens, I'm your guy

...I nearly forgot - I was going to add the yeast right away as I figured the wild yeast would be unpredictable. Also, should I use my hydrometer instead of just judging by time?

Thanks you!

The recipe is for 4.5 litres and that amount of sugar will produce 8% abv. You will certainly need to add the yeast, plus yeast nutrient at the start. Adding vinegar is most unusual, as most wine naturally contains some acetic acid. However, since this recipe does not include a grape element, the vinegar may partly compensate. 2 tablespoons is 50 ml and vinegar is 5% acetic acid so you would be adding 2.5 g of it to 4.5 litres, 0.5% per litre, which is not unusual. Personally I would omit it and include 1 litre of grape juice or 250 g minced sultanas which will improve the flavour and boost the alcohol content to 10%. You don't need castor sugar. Ordinary sugar is fine.

A recipe in the river cottage brewing book advises to rack the wine off and then wait til it hits about 1.010 before bottling to give a more predictable level of carbonation, but I guess you could achieve the same thing by fermenting it out and priming the bottles :wha:
I also have a batch on at the moment and am wondering about this process myself

Thanks very much for the advice both!

Started the batch on weds evening as I was itching to get going. I ended up adding 100ml extra lemon juice instead of the vinegar, and used more sugar to get up to 1.060 SG (was 1kg as opposed to 700g; well actually 4kg as I'm doing 24 litres)

I did add the yeast, and it's bubbling away nicely - however I didn't know anything about yeast nutrient. Is this essential, and is there any value in adding it now?

Also I'm very happy to chuck some grape juice in to improve flavour, if it's not too late?

Flowers don't have natural nutrients for a good fermentation, unlike grape juice, so yes it would be a very good idea to add some.
Bottling at sg 1010 will probably burst. 1000 is safe, providing that champagne bottles that weigh at least 800 g are used.

tonyhibbett said:

Flowers don't have natural nutrients for a good fermentation, unlike grape juice, so yes it would be a very good idea to add some.
Bottling at sg 1010 will probably burst. 1000 is safe, providing that champagne bottles that weigh at least 800 g are used.

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Update - I added 3l of grape juice (to my 24 litre batch) a few days ago. All still bubbling away nicely, tastes very pleasant - hydrometer reads 1.026 now from 1.06 start so guess a while to go yet. Dropping every day though

tonyhibbett said:

Personally I would omit it and include 1 litre of grape juice or 250 g minced sultanas which will improve the flavour and boost the alcohol content to 10%.

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Hello! Sorry for intruding this thread but I got a friend brewing elderflower champagne and she had an explosive accident, so I'm trying to assist by getting information.

Tony when you say add grape juice, you mean recently squashed from the grapes? Or just typical ready-to-drink grape juice from the supermarket? If this is the case, I suppose concentrated would be OK as well? And I guess I should guide myself with the concentrated dose by checking the sugar concentration in relation to a 1L grape juice brick? Will I need extra yeast nutrients with this? Which? :)

Thank you!
PS: Good luck Waverydavey, I highly recommend you to use strong bottles with decent corks + wire and keep them in a safe zone just in case :p
PS2: @ Tony, he's not using 4.5L of water, but 6L (the recipe is split, water should be listed in the ingredients imo)

For this type of wine, any kind of grape juice will do. As for exploding bottles, the best way to avoid this is to use sound champagne type bottles weighing at least 800 g and ensuring that the wine has a specific gravity no higher than 1005 when put in the bottles with an airspace of at least 1.5 inches below the stopper. to act as a buffer. The pressure in the bottles increases with a rise in temperature so they must be stored somewhere cool, 15 c being the ideal, which is why a cellar is best.

Morning all

I'm using 1 litre plastic fizzy pop bottles, so any explosions should be non-lethal hopefully :)

I'm planning on fermentating to dry and then priming bottles, but actually as a bit of an experiment I bottled up 5 litres last night, at gravity of 1005. Be interesting to compare the two batches afterwards!

Tasted it, pleasant and distinctly boozey!

Cheers

Dave

PET bottles are designed to take carbonated drinks, which have significantly less pressure than bottle-fermented wine. I have no idea what happens to them if they burst, but flying pieces of plastic could be as dangerous as shattered glass.

As far as I know if you use plastic bottles you just reduce the potential drama by avoiding glass. However, from what I've heard they will still explode unless you purge them regularly (something that can't be conveniently done with glass).

Sparkling wines must be done in Champagne style bottles with Champagne corks and baskets to truly be considered "safe".

I know people who have bottled in a multitude of formats. They have had success, but the only consistent success lies in the traditional method.

Update: I'm doing this again this year, but thought it was worth a review on how it turned out for posterity!

It was fantastic stuff. Used 1l PET bottles (used pop bottles), fermented to dry and then 10g per litre of sugar to prime. Has no incidents whatsoever with bursts, although i did relieve pressure on a couple when they looked like the tops were bulging. Tasting OK a few weeks later, but after 6 weeks was really delicious - doubling the quantities this year, and upping the alcohol content too.

It would seem that the caps of PET bottles are of a different type of plastic. The fact that they tend to bulge is very useful, as it indicates that the pressure exceeds their design and therefore wise to release some gas. It is also wise to leave at least 35 mm of airspace to act as a buffer because liquid itself cannot be compressed.

tonyhibbett said:

It would seem that the caps of PET bottles are of a different type of plastic. The fact that they tend to bulge is very useful, as it indicates that the pressure exceeds their design and therefore wise to release some gas. It is also wise to leave at least 35 mm of airspace to act as a buffer because liquid itself cannot be compressed.

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Definitely - I always leave a good airspace

Tweaked the recipe this year:

For a 30 litre batch of about 11.5%:

7 kg of sugar
9 big lemons (juice and zest)
Flowers from about 80-100 elderflower heads (rip the main stalks off)
Champagne yeast (1 sachet)
Yeast nutrient (5 tsp)
Citric acid (4 tsp)

Dissolve the sugar in hot water to half full ish, put in lemon juice, zest n flowers. Top up to about 28l.

Dissolve the acid n nutritient in a bit of water and stir in. 'Pitch' the yeast (put it in a cup of warm water for 15 minutes, then chuck it in too).

Lid, bubble trap, done. Ferment to dry, bottle with 10g priming sugar per litre.

Coopers 500ml PET bottle, primed with 10g sugar. You can see the cap bulge in the bottom picture. I haven't ever released any pressure I just let them get on with it, no problems yet.

Cycling Rule #64 // Cornering confidence increases with time and experience.
This pattern continues until it falls sharply and suddenly.

A few odds and ends of PET bottle tests [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D78K3sW-1fA[/ame], [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AERonjBB0Oc[/ame], Education article http://education.seattlepi.com/much-pressure-can-two-liter-bottle-handle-6313.html, no way of knowing how accurate or well calibrated those pressure testing vids are but it seems as long as you don't go mad on priming then good condition PET bottles should be relatively safe. Is the 10g of sugar your adding giving you a high glass fizz when poured as you would see with a tradional sparkling wine/champagne?

chewie said:

Is the 10g of sugar your adding giving you a high glass fizz when poured as you would see with a tradional sparkling wine/champagne?

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It's absolutely spot on. Serve well chilled and there's a nice mousse on pouring and stays fizzy while in the glass.