I'm having my first go at making elderflower champagne. I normally make beer so wines are a new venture for me.
I cobbled the recipe together from examples I'd seen on the web and tips on a couple of forum posts.
For 11L volume into the fermentor:
50 elderflower heads
3L apple juice (couldn't find grape juice in the supermarket so went for a cidery vibe)
Zest and juice of 8 lemons
1.7kg of table sugar.
I left the elderflowers steeping in water overnight with a campden tablet then added the lemons, apple juice and sugar. I aerated well and pitched 1 pack of Wilko ale yeast, which is at least clean fermenting if kept cool (I thought I had some wine yeast but alas not).
It has a starting gravity of 1.065 and the sample tasted amazing. Does this sound like a reasonable recipe? If it ferments to dry what would my final gravity likely to be? Brewer's Friend is only set up for beer and can't handle dry wines which might go below 1.000.
Thanks!
I cobbled the recipe together from examples I'd seen on the web and tips on a couple of forum posts.
For 11L volume into the fermentor:
50 elderflower heads
3L apple juice (couldn't find grape juice in the supermarket so went for a cidery vibe)
Zest and juice of 8 lemons
1.7kg of table sugar.
I left the elderflowers steeping in water overnight with a campden tablet then added the lemons, apple juice and sugar. I aerated well and pitched 1 pack of Wilko ale yeast, which is at least clean fermenting if kept cool (I thought I had some wine yeast but alas not).
It has a starting gravity of 1.065 and the sample tasted amazing. Does this sound like a reasonable recipe? If it ferments to dry what would my final gravity likely to be? Brewer's Friend is only set up for beer and can't handle dry wines which might go below 1.000.
Thanks!