I've started wine making! Got to wait months though to find out if it's any good, and drink it, it's quite exciting, sad I know. Hoping it might be ok to take to camp though it says several months in the book and Lammas Camp is only two month away.
As the Elderflowers are now out and smelling good I thought I would start with Elderflower wine as I remember my Grandma making it and Elderflower Champagne, and it tasted good and cooling on a summers day and at christmas time it reminded you of summer, mind you the corks exploding occasionally in the cellar gave you a bit of a shock.
James and I picked some of the flowers on the way back from the allotment yesterday. When I got back I left them in the bag as I read that if you leave them 24 hours and then give them a good shake the flowers fall of the stalks, but this didn't happen and I didn't want to leave them any longer in case they started to go brown so ran a fork through them and combed them which does work pretty well. We picked more than enough, only needed a pints worth, so I might make some cordial as well.
So now they are soaking in 8 pints of boiling water with 8oz of chopped raisins and the zest of a lemon, this has to stand for 4 days and be stirred occasionally. I've sort of combined two recipes together as I was getting confused with all the different ideas for Elderflower wine out there, the rasins apparently give it body.
So Thursday it will need straining and then 3lbs of sugar and the juice of the lemon and the yeast need adding.
