bottling elderflower champagne

[danmon_81]

I've used the Ikea bottles....3 weeks and they've been fine in a dark cupboard. They do fizz up alot when you open it!!

I've had to add 1 lemons worth of juice to each bottle to reduce the sweetness and it's helped!!

[barneyt]

Left it too late for the IKEA bottle tip

I can sadly vouch for the IKEA swing top bottle experience. They are excellent for beer, however, I had a disaster with ginger ale and more recently that famous elderflower champagne recipe.

Two problems. Secondary fermentation was perhaps too long, hence the build up of excessive pressure. Second was, I had them upstairs on the landing, which was warm.

I picked up one of the ginger beer bottles and was pleased to see that it was still producing gas......it was about 6 inches from my face. I put it down. I then heard a hissing noise, so being the sensible type (father used to check for gas leaks with a lit match by the way...or use his toungue to see if a wire was live) I scanned each bottle for noise, with my ear.

Found the culprit and took it down to cool off in the fridge. The, bang! I got lucky. There was glass everywhere and days later I'm still finding it.

All of the ginger and champagne brews are outside in a cool shaded spot. Coolest place I could find outside of the house. they seem to have calmed, however, I am too afraid to go to them. My plan is this. Cool them in the freezer, until they are just about to ice, uncork them to release the pressure and then recork (swing top lid).

Hopefully that will make them safe. I think the idea is to ensure secondary fermination halts or slows as much as possible.

I'll let you know how it goes. Shame I didn't read this some months back.

Regards
Barney

just a quick warning for you all RE: the bottles.

over on the river cottage forums quite a few people have been logging on to report mass explosions of their brews!

You must either use a plastic bottle and release presure regularly or champagne/fizzy wine bottles with wired on corks (ordniary glass bottles will not suffice- champagne bottles are made of much thicker glass to withstand the pressure) or use a grolsh bottle or similar style one like Hugh used, BUT NOT THE IKEA ONES!

the IKEA bottles are for display only and are way too thin to withstand the pressure and several people have had theirs blow up. Even when using the right kinds of bottles some people have had them explode!

the best thing to do is store them somewhere safe and sheltered so that if they do explode, it doesnt ruin your decorating and spread shards of glass all over the place- you really dont want to get caught in the cross fire, so be careful not to distrub the bottles too much and fizz them up during fermentation.

Another thing that has come up is what people are brewing in- Hugh using a black bin has been frowned upon by many brew shops because using non 'food grade' containers to brew in can contaminate the drink and even poisen you- particualrly funny coloured things like yellow tubs! You should really make sure that you are using a brewing bucket or some other contaienr specifically designed for holding food, that isnt going to poisen you!

alot of people seem to be having issues with hughs ratios of water and sugar, but on the forum lots of people have suggested ammendmants- the only thing i didnt realise is the speed with which you need to start brewing after you have picked the flowers themselves. Within half an hour the flowers start to go catty, so you really need to get bewing as soon as you have finished picking.
Hughs recipe cannot be stored for very long at all as the white wine vinegar can basically turn the brew into elderflower vinegar eventually

hope thats a help? only passing on what seems to have come about from lots of peoples disasters! I had a chat with a lady in a brew shop and she explained quite alot to me. She said river cottage has caused all sorts of caos and everyone has been buying up the grolsch style brewing bottles left right and center, but because of the lack of info in the show alot of people are making fatal mistakes- with explosions being common and people brewing in all sorts of unsuitable containers. Alot of people have required extra yeast (most people) and she said that baking yeast wont be strong enough, you really should use a brewing yeast for sparkling wines. I think the show could have gone into a teeny bit more detail of the complexities to prevent some of the problems everyone seems to be having with this recipe over anything else that appeared in the 4 shows!

[LostGoddess]

I can vouch for the explosive potential of Hugh's brew...
I made a batch with this recipe and bottled it yesterday, but got a decidedly sinking type feeling when I bottled it because it was quite vinegary to taste and it fizzed even as it was INTO the bottles (strong swing-top bottles). So after advice on the other thread (thanks saracenia) I collected more flowers and made it following the BBC recipe on other thread.
I decided to throw away at least some of my previous batch so I could use the bottles and PHOOOOWEEE was it fizzy! in just 24 hours! I almost wished I had saved it and donated it to the British round of Moto GP because it would have been ideal for the podium celebrations and no need to shake! It also tasted just about like fizzy vinegar.
I'm glad I started again, as the current batch tasted delish before bottling.

[Jerryfb]

Wow. If I can chip in with my advice here. Bottles explode and expand because they have too much fermentation going on. I know that'll be obvious to most but a lot of the recipes I have seen suggest bottling up far too early. If you have the equipment then I would suggest carrying out the first fermentation in the brewing vessel for a week or so. Then rack off into demi-johns and fit airlocks. The great thing about airlocks is that they allow you to guage the rate of gas production. If you bottle up when gas is still pouring off the yeast then you'll have explosions. You need to wait until the fermentation has virtually stopped and the liquid is clear (when it's still cloudy it means lots of busy yeast in suspension). I think that's about two weeks in the demijohns (less in this weather) After the clearing and a slow down in the rate of fermentation you can bottle up. I add a small amount of sugar syrup (a teaspoon) to champagne bottles and then add a plastic champagne cork with a wire cage. Likewise don't rush to drink. Cider can take a good 6 months. I reckon that you should wait as long for the elderflower champagne. All good things...

Can I also suggest you invest in a good wine or champagne yeast. About a pound a packet for a 23 litre batch. More efficient and far used to dealing with making high alcohol content drinks than bread yeast which is better at making CO2

[Snadger]

My Gran usd to make Elderflower fizzy pop in ordinary pop bottles without any exploding. I reckon if you dont add yeast there's plenty of natural yeast in the mix to give it the fizz!

[glut]

re: hot bottles...
I think the basic rule is hot stuff into hot bottles or jars and cold stuff into cold bottles or jars.

[pdblake]

I had glass bottles with screw-caps literally explode like glass hand grenades last year. Glad I wasn't in the shed at the time or I would have been shredded.

Glass bottles with corks worked fine this year though, plenty of fizz and no bang

[Hilary B]

There seem to be 2 very different things being refered to as 'elderflower champagne'. One is a slightly alcoholic 'fizzy pop' comparable with home-made ginger beer, which ideally uses natural yeast, is quite sweet, and isn't intended to keep so very long. The other is a sparkling elderflower wine, which is a different animal entirely!

[janeyo]

I am GUTTED, came home from holiday and Dad had forgotten to release the pressure on the 10 litres of elderflower champagne we had stood outside.... all of them spread all over the lawn and ants everywhere.

They have all blown the plastic bottles up.

Gutted

[barneyt]

Bottling up FAR too early

I have to agree. I underestimated the level of activity prior to bottling up. I had explosions with the elderflower champagne and home made ginger ale. Despite fermenting the ginger ale in a large air-locked demijohn, there was still too much going on in the bottle. Hard lessons learned.

In terms of dealing with what had now become explosive devices, I initially took them out and put them in the shade. That has stopped explosions. I have since taken them in one my one, cooled them in the freezer and then uncorked them. They have calmed down. Having released some of the gas, sampled a bit and recorked them, they have now become safe.

But, I will use the advice below.

P.S.

Anyhow tried elderberry champagne. Would elderberry produce its own natural yeast as the flower does?

Wow. If I can chip in with my advice here. Bottles explode and expand because they have too much fermentation going on. I know that'll be obvious to most but a lot of the recipes I have seen suggest bottling up far too early. If you have the equipment then I would suggest carrying out the first fermentation in the brewing vessel for a week or so. Then rack off into demi-johns and fit airlocks. The great thing about airlocks is that they allow you to guage the rate of gas production. If you bottle up when gas is still pouring off the yeast then you'll have explosions. You need to wait until the fermentation has virtually stopped and the liquid is clear (when it's still cloudy it means lots of busy yeast in suspension). I think that's about two weeks in the demijohns (less in this weather) After the clearing and a slow down in the rate of fermentation you can bottle up. I add a small amount of sugar syrup (a teaspoon) to champagne bottles and then add a plastic champagne cork with a wire cage. Likewise don't rush to drink. Cider can take a good 6 months. I reckon that you should wait as long for the elderflower champagne. All good things...

Can I also suggest you invest in a good wine or champagne yeast. About a pound a packet for a 23 litre batch. More efficient and far used to dealing with making high alcohol content drinks than bread yeast which is better at making CO2

[Scottishnewbie]

Can't help with your original question but one thing I learned from here (thanks Shirlthegirl) is, if you have a dishwasher, put the empty bottles on the open lid of the dishwasher and the demijohn above and fill them there. That way, any drips (or in my case, gushes) will be caught on the dishwasher lid.

Never read this before but what a brilliant tip! I always make loads of mess so this is great for me...thank you

[maytreefrannie]

I didn't add yeast, just let them go on the natural yeast.

I've got mine in those fizzy lemonade glass bottles with the swing-top toppers, plus one plastic fizzy drink bottle. So far so good, but I'm going to check them in a few minutes - release the pressure just in case - I've got them all on the kitchen worktop!

[Worsel]

Elderflower Champagne
Makes 24 bottles

Ingredients

About 24-30 elderflower heads, in full bloom
2kg sugar
4 litres hot water
Juice and zest of four lemons
1-2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
A pinch of dried yeast (you may not need this)

Hi All,
I've just joined this Forum Today. to let you all Know about the Above recipes ..
Please check the River Cottage Web site because they have revised this Recipe. I have being checking through the Web looking for the Best way to make Elderflower Champagne. And their seams to be a LOT of different recipes..Diferent amounts of Sugar and different amounts of Time Scales..
The more I looked the More Confused I became..
A lot of People copied the Recipe from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and posted it on different SITES
Considering that the original recipe (with over 3x the quantity of sugar) appeared on this website for a year, perhaps an apology would be in order? is one of the Comments on HFW site!
I was Lucky today to find the last of the Flowers and have started a new batch. 1Kg Sugar + 10 Litres of water. + 3 lemons + 3 Ts white wine vinegar.
I will let you know how it went??

[SarzWix]

We made it with the revised River Cottage recipe, bottled it into sterilised 7UP/Sprite bottles. It's worked wonderfully and very easy to deal with any pressure build-up if necessary.

[Brewer-again]

back to basics

I have tried to read all the theads in this group but have given up as there is so much miss or partial information about.
I posted that I had brewed a gorse flower brew on this site about four years ago.
You just need to follow basic rules.
Never bottle untill the basic ferment has finished, then you can control the fizz that will be made in the bottle.

Never exceed the amount of sugar in the recipe for bottling, usually about half a teaspoon of sugar per pint.

Use bottles that previously contained fizzy drinks, I use glass italian lemonade bottles and plastic lemonade and cider bottles.

Wash bottles with hot water and washing up liquid then rinse and drain, don't let them sit about damp, I store them, lid off upside down.

Always rinse them out after you have drained them.

Very important, chill the brew before decanting, you will never have a bubbling over brew if you chill it first.

I used gorse flowers, sugar beet and oats and it was lovely.

The main rules are about cleanliness and sugar ratios.