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RECIPE: How To Make Elderflower Champagne

By Colin and Mitch in Recipes, VTSub on 18th June 2024.

Going for a walk in the English countryside during springtime is one of the great pleasures in life. Foraging for food whilst on a splendid walk is another. And when the elderflowers are out, it is the perfect time to pick a few sprigs from the trees and make elderflower champagne. It’s a gorgeous drink – fizzy, floral and fabulous. Here’s our recipe for how to make elderflower champagne.

(Disclaimer – sadly it’s not real Champagne as that has a protected name designation. But it is a proper alcoholic fizzy beverage.)

The Elder tree is a forager’s delight – you can pick its flowers in the spring/summer but always leave enough for them to transition to delicious elderberries in the autumn. There are all sorts of things you can do with elderflowers and elderberries.

One of the loveliest things to do is to make elderflower champagne. It is a slightly alcoholic sparkling drink which has a lovely floral scent. We never really know how alcoholic it is but it’s not very strong because we use the natural wild yeasts on the flowers. (If you wanted to measure the alcohol content you can get a hydrometer which would give an indication.)

The great thing about elderflower champagne is that it uses very few ingredients and you can make it with minimal equipment. You will need bottles that can withstand fizz, we use recycled pop bottles. We don’t recommend using glass bottles because they will build up quite a bit of pressure and you don’t want them to explode!

Foraging For Elderflowers

You need to go foraging when the weather is dry. That’s because rain will wash the pollen from the flowers away. When you pick the flowers you’ll want to see a small cloud of yellow pollen on the petals. That’s when they are perfect. You’ll need about 10-15 sprigs to get that lovely elderflower scent. Don’t wash the flowers, just check for any insects that might be lurking within their delicate blooms and pick them off.

When you are foraging always make sure you are 100% certain about what you are picking. In our park we often find cow parsley growing under the elder trees and the flowers can look quite similar. And, while cow parsley isn’t poisonous it is related to some very toxic plants such as hemlock, which also has a spray of white flowers and is deadly. This photo has both elderflowers and cow parsley.

The elderflowers are attached to the tree and the cow parsley is growing up from the ground. Please be careful.

Elderflower Champagne Recipe

Ingredients

10-15 elderflower heads

600g sugar

3 lemons

4 litres of water

Method

If you are using tap water, either boil it and let it cool or pour it into a bowl and let it stand for several hours so that the chlorine can evaporate. This recipe uses natural yeasts from the flowers so it’s better to remove as much chlorine from the tap water as possible.

Use a very clean bowl. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

Cut the lemons in half. Squeeze the juice into the water (don’t worry about pips) and add the lemons.

Add the elderflowers.

Cover with a clean tea-towel and let the fermentation magic begin.

The mixture should ferment using yeasts that occur naturally but have a look under the cloth after a couple of days to check that it is foaming. If it isn’t, add a teeny amount of winemaker’s yeast. We sometimes find it goes a little bit gloopy, but that’s okay.

After around 5 days and no more than a week, strain off the elderflowers and lemons using a sieve.

Then decant into bottles. VERY IMPORTANT. Fermentation will continue in the bottle – the yeast will eat the remaining sugar and produce carbon dioxide (and alcohol). If carbon dioxide builds up and your bottle isn’t strong enough to contain it – BOOM! You’ll have to clean up your entire kitchen of sticky liquid and, worse, wait a whole year before you can try again.

We recommend strong plastic carbonation bottles with screw lids or you could use strong glass bottles with champagne stoppers. You need to wash them very thoroughly, ideally sterilise them.

One way of making sure you are getting fizz is to put a little dent in the pop bottles. After a few days the CO2 will push the dent out and you’ll feel pressure on the bottle. That’s a great sign that the fizz is getting fizzy!

Elderflower champagne in bottles — *Immediately after bottling*

Store for at least a week but they will last in a cool, dry place for a few months.

All you need to do is wait for a nice summer’s day. (Which, in England, is sometimes quite a long wait!) On a hot, hot day, pop a bottle in the fridge for a few hours. Then open it up, relishing the hiss of the fabulous fizz, and pour into glasses.