Elderflower pop/champagne

[BarrelMonkey]

The elderflowers are blooming in my yard so I thought I'd have a go at recreating my favorite childhood beverage: Elderflower pop. I think most people call it elderflower champagne, but the version I remember was very low in alcohol and I think more akin to a soda than a wine, with just enough fermentation to produce carbonation.

There are many recipes on the internet: I decided to roughly follow this one, which is on the lower end of the sugar/alcohol spectrum. It's also a really small batch (1.5L) so I'm not out much if it's a spectacular failure. I'm going to try it with native yeast first, and if that doesn't work I figure I'll try another batch (or maybe even rescue this batch) with a little wine yeast. I'm also going to do the fermentation in bulk rather than in bottles as the recipe suggests, so that I can measure specific gravity and see how it's proceeding.

Does anyone else make this? I love the flavor, and I'd be interested to hear any suggestions or alternative approaches.

 

[Rice_Guy]

lower end of the sugar/alcohol spectrum. It's also a really small batch (1.5L) so , , , , and I'd be interested to hear any suggestions or alternative approaches.

The concern I have is low alcohol below five percent has low preservative action. From a food safety point of view I would either add enough acid to drop the pH to 2.0 to 2.5 after any primary or keep it as a refrigerated low shelf life beverage.
Skipping the fermentation is possible by creating an extract of flowers (like an F pack) or with grain alcohol and using this to flavor a soda stream carbonated beverage.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

The concern I have is low alcohol below five percent has low preservative action. From a food safety point of view I would either add enough acid to drop the pH to 2.0 to 2.5 after any primary or keep it as a refrigerated low shelf life beverage.
Skipping the fermentation is possible by creating an extract of flowers (like an F pack) or with grain alcohol and using this to flavor a soda stream carbonated beverage.

Thanks for the feedback Rice_Guy. OG was 1.042 so it will definitely be 5% or less alcohol (I think much lower, since I expect to bottle it sweet).

This will be a short term refrigerated beverage: I only made 1.5L so if it's any good I expect to drink it within a week or two after fermentation! The recipe I used includes lemon juice and a tablespoon of cider vinegar, which should lower pH somewhat. But your point is well taken, and I'll see if I can get a pH measurement.

I did make a flower extract/cordial from my elderflowers last year and it was a nice addition to tonic water (or gin and tonic ). But I thought I'd try my hand at fermenting something for a change.

 

[Rice_Guy]

from a flavor point I shy away from vinegar in any beverage and toward lemon juice or citric acid (look in the Ball canning section of the store) or to low flavor naturals like rhubarb juice (malic acid)

! The recipe I used includes lemon juice and a tablespoon of cider vinegar, which should lower pH some

 

[BernardSmith]

I have always wondered why the traditional method of making elderflower wine used vinegar. My assumption was that it used the bacteria in the active vinegar with the indigenous yeast (since no lab cultured yeast was typically added) but the idea of introducing vinegar into a wine making space was to me beyond belief.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

I have always wondered why the traditional method of making elderflower wine used vinegar

I'm guessing just because it's more commonly available than, say, citric acid? Several of the recipes I found just use lemon juice.

I figured I'd be faithful to the original recipe for my first attempt, though I've already gone a bit off road... The recipe calls for 'golden sugar', and I used light brown sugar - however it turns out that golden sugar is actually white sugar that hasn't been fully refined, so it has just a very pale caramel hue. My sugar solution is more of an orange-tan color which is not unpleasant but doesn't really seem 'elderflowery'. White sugar next time!

 

[winemanden]

I used to have old winemaking book By Peggy Hutchinson. She said that if you added, I think it was a Half teaspoon, of wine vinegar to each bottle at bottling time, it would make your wine sparkle if you left it twelve months before drinking. Whether this works or not, I don't know, maybe it starts a malolactic ferment in the bottle. I've always been wary of trying it myself.

 

[Rice_Guy]

in this age a commercial vinegar is sterile so it would not grow.
A traditional vinegar is produced with Acetobacter (not Ozaei) therefore it is not capable of doing a Malolactic fermentation. The purpose of malo is to soften the acid/ reduce the TA. What Acetobacter does is take ethyl alcohol which isn’t acidic and oxidize it into an acid, which increases the TA.
Acid, actually pH is a preservative which keeps many families of bacteria from growing, so in a low tech soda pop formulation low pH needs to be there.
The lab bench method is to test out an ingredient. My training is to do several levels in a bench trial and find the level which I think is best. Then go down to the next lab or get the secretaries and have a taste test to rank preference. There is some acetic acid produced by yeast fermentation and low levels add complexity/ more interesting. Soooooo the first question is how many ml per 750 ml bottle do you need to make an elderflower soda interesting? ,,,,, For me the answer when making heat treated acidified shelf stable retail food was the flavor impact of acetic acid was high so I couldn’t accomplish the required pH work at levels where the vinegar flavor was positive.
,,, The second question is to make a food poisoning resistant beverage what pH do you need/ how much vinegar was required to create that pH in the system? If you have a low solids soda (low buffer capacity) the pH level and flavor level could be at the same place.

I used to have old winemaking book By Peggy Hutchinson. {date?} She said that if you added, I think it was a Half teaspoon, of wine vinegar to each bottle at bottling time, it would make your wine sparkle if you left it twelve months before drinking. Whether this works or not, I don't know, maybe it starts a malolactic ferment in the bottle.

A malolactic fermentation will be dead if you do not have malic acid (energy source) in the soda (wine). Formulating with natural ingredients may add malic as if the elder flower soda is acidified with apple juice or rhubarb. Citrus and vinegar do not contain substantial malic acid.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

Well, after a week I don't have much evidence of fermentation in my sham-pagne. SG is 1.040 (down from 1.042) and pH is 3.09 - not as low as Rice_Guy would like, but not as high as I feared.

I moved it to a warm room to see if I can start it, but I am leaning towards putting this one down to experience and starting afresh with some fresh flowers and sugar, this time pitching some good active yeast+yeast nutrient.

 

[BernardSmith]

It's likely that you either never had enough indigenous yeast or you killed the yeast but don't give up. I would simply pitch some lab cultured yeast after adding enough sugar to increase the gravity to about 1.090 (+/-) which if you started with 1.5 L might be something like 100 g of sugar.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

So I started again (yesterday, 5/30)... the first attempt didn't seem to be going anywhere except getting a grey film on top of it. This time I pitched some yeast starter (DV10) and added more sugar to take OG to 1.066. I added lemon juice and tartaric acid to lower the pH but I think I might have overdone it on the tartaric: I measured it today at pH = 2.77. I know that patience is the way forward here, but nervous that I'm asking too much of my yeast!

 

[Rice_Guy]

2.77 is very low! Two choices
Add a working yeast culture as is done with skeeter pee,, it still probably will get stuck at 1.000
Add potassium bicarbonate to raise the pH to three or 3.2,,

. I added lemon juice and tartaric acid to lower the pH but I think I might have overdone it on the tartaric: I measured it today at pH = 2.77 , , , , but nervous that I'm asking too much of my yeast!

 

[BarrelMonkey]

2 days after pitching yeast I hear fizzing, so I think the yeast survived. I'm still going to add a bit of (sodium) bicarbonate to help things along, but hopeful so far.

 

[BarrelMonkey]

I thought I'd post an update in case it's helpful to anyone now and in the future. My fermentation proceeded slowly, and by day 12 I decided it needed a little help so added 1/8 tsp DAP (~0.4g). That seemed to move things along nicely, and a couple of days later I strained the wine through a coarse strainer to get rid of the flowers and lemon that were still in there. By day 18, SG was down to 1.022 - close to my planned bottling time, but I was about to leave town for 4 days and there was no way I was going to leave potentially explosive bottles untended for that long.

On my return (Day 24), SG was down to 0.998, pH was 3.00 and the wine tasted very dry. (It tasted good; perhaps a slight salty note, which I attribute to the fact that when I raised the pH earlier I had no potassium bicarbonate on hand so used baking soda instead). I racked it off the lees which had settled out nicely (though the wine was still a bit cloudy and I think still fermenting slowly).

I wanted the final product to be at least a bit sweet and so made a 'dosage' of 60g sugar in 200mL boiled water. When it cooled, I added it to the wine and left overnight. Tomorrow I'm going to bottle (into single serving 10-oz plastic tonic water bottles, leaving about 1" headspace), then check on it over the next few days as it (hopefully!) develops some carbonation.