First batch · 19.0 litres · Flower wine
Elderflower wine
The flower brings aroma and absolutely nothing else, so the sugar, acid, tannin and nutrient are all things you add. Made in June, drunk the following summer, and it tastes like the hedge it came from.
Starting sugar
19.7 Brix
4.06 kg of fermentable sugar
Original gravity
1.082
from the ingredients, not asserted
Finishing gravity
1.002
medium
Alcohol
10.5%
Brix alone predicts 10.9 to 11.8%
Residual sugar
18 g/L
approximate, from gravity
Ready after
6 months
best around 2 years
Made to Flower wine, and every computed figure lands inside the published range for it.
ABV inTA inpH inRS inWhat decides this wine
Picking on a dry, sunny morning and using the flowers within hours. Elderflower aroma collapses within a day of picking, and washing the heads takes most of it with the water. Shake the insects out instead.
What goes in
| Ingredient | Weight | Sugar | Volume | Share of sugar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elderflower About a litre of loosely packed florets. Use the flowers only: any green stalk makes it bitter, and the difference is not subtle. | 60 g | - | - | 0% |
| White sugar | 3.50 kg | 3.50 kg | 2.21 L | 86% |
| White grape concentrate | 0.60 kg | 0.41 kg | 0.46 L | 10% |
| Raisins Chopped, for body. | 0.25 kg | 0.15 kg | - | 4% |
| Wine tannin | 4 g | - | - | 0% |
| Yeast nutrient | 12 g | - | - | 0% |
| Water, to volume | - | - | 16.30 L | - |
The ingredients contribute 2.7 litres and the water makes up the rest to 19 litres. Those figures are checked against each other when the site is built, because a recipe whose volumes do not add up produces a wine weaker or stronger than every number above.
Acid and sulphite
Acidity of the must
6.5 g/L
at pH 3.30
No malolactic
6.5 g/L
the acidity you measure is the acidity you keep
No acid adjustment
none
to reach 6.5 g/L. Bench trial before treating the batch
Sulphite at bottling
1.0 g
potassium metabisulphite, for 29 mg/L free SO2 at pH 3.35
The batch
- Must volume
- 19 L
- Ferment at
- 16-20 C
- Molecular SO2 target
- 0.8 mg/L
- Malolactic
- No
- Yeast
- Cote des Blancsto 14%, medium N
The sulphite figure is worked out against the pH of the finished wine, not of the must. Malolactic and deacidification both raise pH, and dosing a finished red to its must pH under-protects it by roughly a third. Recompute for your own reading.
Method
- 01Pick on a dry morning when the heads are fully open and smell strongly. Shake them out; do not wash them.
- 02Strip the florets from every scrap of green stalk. This is tedious and it is the whole recipe.
- 03Dissolve the sugar and concentrate in warm water, top up cold to volume, and add the citric or tartaric acid your reading calls for.
- 04Add the florets, tannin and nutrient, and pitch once the must is below 25C.
- 05Strain the florets out after three days, then ferment out in a carboy.
- 06Stabilise, back-sweeten lightly, and bottle. Drink it the following summer.
The two instruments this recipe needs
Every number on this page came from a hydrometer reading and a pH reading. Without those two you are following a recipe rather than making a wine, and the sulphite figure in particular is meaningless without a pH you have actually measured.
Measuring
Hydrometer and trial jar
SOLIGT Triple Scale Hydrometer and Glass Test Jar for Wine, Beer, Mead & Cider - ABV, Brix and Gravity Test Kit
$18.98
Tracks the ferment from must to dry. The gap between your starting and finishing gravity is the only reliable way to know the alcohol you actually made.
Measuring
pH meter
Apera Instruments AI1113 pH Calibration Buffer Solution Kit (7.00, 4.00), 8 oz. Each
$18.00
The most important instrument on this page. pH decides how much of your sulphite is actually protecting the wine, and dosing without knowing it is guesswork.