ELDERBERRY SECRETS

[NorthernWinos]

With the permission of the Author Luc Volders I am Posting this information for all you lucky folks with Elderberries...Maybe next year I'll get a few.


[Quote...Luc Volders]


The elderberries are just starting to ripen over here. And I already picked about 4 kilo !!

Now you can make an excellent wine from elderberries (even a port-like wine) but you have to take care of some things:

a) Elderberries HAVE TO BE COOKED as there is sambunigrin acid in them
which may be poisonous to some of us. By cooking the elderberries for 15 minutes the sambunigrin acid will decompose and the berries are perfectly safe to consume (or make wine).

You have to separate the ripe berries from the unripe.
Now you can do that by handpicking (a tedious work) as you will know the difference from color: greens are unripe, black and deep purple are ripe.

The easiest way to seperate ripe from unripe berries I learned from an old winemaker.
Pour a bottom of berries in a bucket and pour cold water over them. Now strirr well and the unripe berries will float atop. Ripe berries have a higher sugar content and therefore will submerge. Unripe berries have a lower sugar content and therefore a lower SG and will float.

For a photo session, floating berries and my recipes visit please my web-log because it is to much to publish here.
The photo will give you an impression but I did want to inform you all here about this method I use each year which saves me a tremendous lot of time.

Luc Volders
http://wijnmaker.web-log.nl
[email protected]

 

[Waldo]

Very helpful info NW...Thanks for sharing it

 

[jobe05]

Great info NW.

I have been reading about these lately since mine are about ready for harvest. Everything I have read, also says that they are somewhat poisonous to humans, I sure they would have to be consumed raw and in some quantity to make you ill, but the bathroom would become home for a few days.

 

[bj4271]

Handy info, especially since I was out at the deer lease this weekend & found a 6' high elderberry plant in the middle of the campsite. One of the guys out there said there's 'dozens of those' in the creek bottom. I could be onto something

!!!!!!! Edited by: bj4271

 

[NorthernWinos]

Up here we have wild ones that the berries stay red when ripe, they are very early, unlike these black ones that bloom so late... think the red onesare poisonous.


Manyplants are poisonous if not handled right, like rhubarb leaves and some other plants.


I

 

[bj4271]

This weekend a bunch of us were tearing down an old shed when one stared hopping around, yelling & cursing. He had just uncovered a yellow jacket nest. Naturally, we all scattered. My brother in law ran into some head high bushes. After things calmed down, he called me over & showed me - in the middle of these bushes - a small elderberry grove that I must have passed by a hundred times this year and never noticed.


These are wild, in fact they grew up where I had a house burned down last year & they weren't there then.


I transplanted 8 Sunday because I know that area will be bulldozed this summer. I don't expect any to make it, but I'll try to transplant the rest this weekend when I find a place.

 

[Waldo]

Lucky you Bruce..hopefully they will be ok.

 

[jobe05]

Bruce, good find for you. You'd be surprised how resilient the young ones can be. I pulled one out of the woods and through it in the corner of the garden, kept it well watered for a couple of weeks and it just shriveled up to "almost" nothing, then the "almost" nothing leafed out and now, 3 months later is 5 feet tall and has 3 branches. It looks great! So you'd be surprised.

Wish ya luck!

 

[NorthernWinos]

bj.....when you transplant things at this time of the year it is a good idea to cut the plant back to about half....then there is less plant to 'evaporate' the moisture....The plant will be more balanced...you shocked the roots by uprooting it, so you balance the top of the plant to match the roots that are there.....Just a thought...works for me with flowers and shrubs....should work with your berries.


Good luck with your new 'wine garden'.

 

[Dean]

Best of luck with the new plants.

Not to hijack the thread, but I was out all last week in the interior of BC, a region called the Kootenays. They have wild elderberry trees all over the place that were all ripe! We picked about 4 5 gallon pails of them, and when cleaned and pulled off the stalks, the berries themselves weighed in at close to 30 pounds! They are all washed and in the freezer waiting to be cooked and fermented

 

[NorthernWinos]

Good going guys with getting Elderberries and plants....Dean, hope share your Elderberry Wine making experience.....How did you separate the berries from the stems???


Sure hope someday my little bushes produce.

 

[Dean]

I did it all by hand! It took over 4 hours, and by the end I was completely sticky and gooey because a lot of the berries were almost over-ripe. Picking them was actually the hard part. They all grow at the side of the road in ditches out there, and those shrubs are closer to trees! We had pole pruners to get the higher up berries. Mostly we had to push through salmon berry bramble and wild rose bramble, just to get to the bushes. We'd clip off whole clusters and place them in the buckets. Then when we got back, I'd get a good chair, and start pulling the berries off the little branches. Didn't someone on here post a sort of rake made with nails? I think that might work far better!

 

[Cracked Cork]

Its always stems vs berries. Picking by had leaves the fewest stems and lets you go over each berry as you are plucking them off by hand. You can also use an afro comb but that starts to strip off some stems. You can also freeze them, knock them around to get the berries off but the small stems break and you may want to sort them out by either using a big sheet pan or a sorting table to get most of the stems out. We are doing both this year depending on how many berries we get each day, once are fingers refuse to pick another berry the rest get frozen. Crackedcork

 

[Joanie]

Elderberries give themselves up reluctantly!!!

 

[bj4271]

Yesterday, I found another large group of what appears to be elderberries, but they have red berries instead of black. Didn't I read a post (NW?) that these weeren't suitable for wine?

 

[NorthernWinos]

Maybe yours are not ripe yet....? Up here in this part of the country the red ones are considered poisonous...will clear up a case of constipation.


Maybe contact your local US Agriculture County Extension agent and ask him or her, just to be sure....Look under your county offices.

 

[NorthernWinos]

Here is some info on the Red Elderberry...


http://ghs.gresham.k12.or.us/science/ps/nature/gorge/5petal/honey/sam/red.htm


http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/nature/shrubs/sambucuspub.html


http://www.sfu.ca/halk-ethnobiology/html/plants/redelderb.htm


http://www.cnr.vt.edu/DENDRO/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=255

 

[bj4271]

Thanks for the references. #1 says to avoid the fruit of red elderberries at all costs. One of the others says it's ok to eat if it's ripe. The others say boil first, then ok.


That's what I like - A CONSENSUS!!! Now I'm really confused. Some locals I've talked to say they're edible. But, like NW's post & one of the others says - they're a good cure for constipation.


Does anyone have any idea what effect fermentation will have on them or am I going to have to experiment?

 

[R.E.T.]

O BOY
HERE WE GO AGAIN, I HAVE 5 GAL. IN THE BOTTLE THAT ALMOST A YEAR OLD. NOW I READ YOU SHOULD COOK THEM. I STEAM THEM, WOULD THAT BE THE SAME AS COOKING? I SURE HOPE SO. I WOULD HATE TO LOSE A YEARS WORK. SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THE WINE IS OK.

 

[NorthernWinos]

I sure hope it will be okay....Steaming actually gets them cooked....


I am curious.......someday I hope to have Elderberries I also will steam them to extract the juice....What I am wondering....Did you get the Green-Goo everyone is talking about when they ferment Elderberries????