Elderberry search

Here in central Nebraska the elderberries are all flowered out. Just a quick reminder, Keep your eyes open when you are driving around. Mark down where you see the flowers, they are a lot harder to spot in late August when the berries are ripe. Arne.

Here they are still easy to spot, but quickly becoming less so. My early searching has me spotting several more areas to harvest in a month or so.

Berries are forming here already. I have my stash located. Hoping to get another 100 lbs this year then make a 25-30 gallon batch between this year and the 110 lbs from last year that are still sitting in the freezer.

montanaWineGuy said:

Here they are still easy to spot, but quickly becoming less so. My early searching has me spotting several more areas to harvest in a month or so.

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Thanks for the pics. I am computer challenged and the pictures are beyond me for now. Arne

Arne said:

Thanks for the pics. I am computer challenged and the pictures are beyond me for now. Arne

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Arne I am so with you on the computer challenged part, I have a hard time just typing, it's been a really long time since high school typing class. Dale.

So how many pounds per gallon do you all like to use for a wine ?

Because I have LOTS!!! of Berry's spoted

Any recipe help would be great too!

Thanks

I will try and remember to check my notes, but believe I used about 5 lb. per gal. Elderberries are to my taste rather strong flavored. W.V. Jack says use pure juice but that would be too much berry flavor for me. So I guess to end this, try making a few different batches, keep track howmuch you use in each batch and pick the one you like best for next year or if you freeze enough berries you can start a new batch with them. Now you can try blending the wines with some others and the choices become endless. LOL, Good luck with it, Arne.

5 pounds per gallon is what I use as well. Also, I will take the berries and put them in another bucket and ferment them again with a 5 gallon batch of Niagara.

We use pure steamed juice, not so much pure pressed juice. Also if you have lots of berries try drying a bunch of them and making a wine from the dried berries, you can weigh the berries before you dry and after to get an equivalent weight in dry to wet berries and base your recipe off of that. We use a little more dried ones vs the equivalent weight of wet, something in the drying makes the flavors a little richer and deeper if that makes any sense and well worth the effort. Some of our bushes have fruit this year, if the drosophila doesnt get them again this year we plan on drying them all, stores easily in a vacumn bag to vs freezing them. WVMJ

OK thank u all every much I'll try some at 5lbs per gallon and mabie a batch of less and a batch of more and see what I like and the second wine with the Niagara sounds nice as well

My neibors farm is 300 acres and almost all of his fence rows and road sides are coverd in elderberry so I can pick as many as I feel like messing with