a busy domestic blog of knitting, sewing and all kinds of needlecrafts, cooking my garden produce and preserving it

Wednesday, 11 June 2014

Elderflower time

It's elderflower time - so for the past few weeks I've been making elderflower fizz.

  I'm always amazed how the basic everyday ingredients - flowers, lemon peel + juice, sugar and water - turn into magical bubbly with so little effort; 24 hours in a bowl followed by a fortnight hidden in a cupboard - and it's ready to drink!

I was worried at first that for some reason the elders weren't flowering in the local wood - I'd seen plenty of people on line talking about picking  flowers and making 'champagne' or cordial, I'd seen bushes in flower down town but too near to busy roads to be tempting to pick, but none in 'our' wood.


At last I found some, so I started with a small batch made in a mixing bowl, then a week later a larger amount in the jam pan and a few days later another smallish batch - so the kitchen has looked rather like a home brewery with funnels balanced precariously as the liquid strained into bottles.






Sadly I've run up against a bottle-shortage problem now. I thought I had plenty of bottles saved up but despite using anything I could find - glass bottles from Lambrusco and shop-bought elderflower bubbly, 2 litre plastic ones that held lemonade (never the old coke bottles as they leave a funny taste) and smaller fruit juice drink bottles - I've run out. Fortunately the first batch is ready to drink so I might re-use those bottles.








No comments:

Post a Comment