I love making wine.
When I was younger, I used to make beer at home. It was fun and I enjoyed going to the beer club and tasting all the beer. I liked the people that I met and I really enjoyed taking notes and adjusting the water, and adding hops at just the right time and temperature.
Black Elderberry Tree
Eventually, I gave up making beer and moved on to other things.
I had the pleasure of going to an old farmhouse every weekend in upstate new york, and in the basement of the house was a treasure trove of wine making equipment.
Wine…very similar to beer…..I remember seeing wine concentrate at the home brew shops, it was usually dusty and in the back corner. Wine was not something that anyone I knew actually made.
I discovered the outlets for fresh grapes and purchased fresh juice from local vineyards…some batches were better than others and then I moved on to other things.
Chamomile Rake
Last week, the Black Elderberry tree that I planted burst open with blooms. Elderflower is a delightful scent and is something that is not that common here, unless you shop at Ikea. St. Germain, a popular liquor, is made with elderflowers.
I decided to make elderflower wine.
Several years ago, I purchased a chamomile rake to harvest flowers. With the help of the rake, it made picking the florets a pretty easy process.
I used about 4 pints of flowers and 5 lemons and put them in a 5 gallon carboy with a sugar solution, white wine yeast and some nutrient. The final SG was about 1.060 which will make a very, very mild wine.
The color is slowly turning pink and the smell is amazing. Can’t wait to try it.
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