Elderflower & Strawberry Champagne Style Sparkling Wine: Easy Homebrew

[Music] hi in today's video i'm going to show you how to make strawberry and elderflower champagne it's dry it's crisp it's fruity it's the taste of summer no fancy equipment no expensive ingredients you can make this for pennies hello my name's hugh welcome to english country life today's video is about this strawberry and elderflower champagne it's really dry it's like a great dry carver or a dry champagne a proper grown-up sparkling wine perfect for the summer for barbecues and just for sitting out with friends it's cheap it needs a bit of fruit from the garden some flowers from the hedgerow but sugar from the supermarket nothing that's going to cost you any serious money and no proper equipment no demijohns and airlocks and racking and siphons and all that malarkey you can do this with a few empty pot bottles let me show you how [Music] we're going to head down to the vegetable garden near our burning pile we've got the most glorious elderflower tree it actually serves as a very efficient barrier between our compost bin area and the vegetable garden itself now you can see it's wonderful it's in full bloom at the moment and these are the blooms which we've used in the past for this elderflower and strawberry champagne so what we need to do is gather some of these blooms but careful selection is important so let me show you how we select those blooms let's look at the balloons that you're looking for this set of balloons here has a lot of unopened flowers so it's best to leave those the second set of blooms has a lot of brown flowers so they've gone over and are past giving you some good flavor what we need is a bloom like this one where all of the flowers are open there's lots of pollen which gives you that flavor for this recipe we need eight large elderflower blooms but best to be careful with that pollen because shaking it here you can see all the pollens disappearing which would mean all the flavor would be lost [Music] the next thing we need to do is gather some strawberries it's okay to buy them commercially from the supermarket if you're not lucky enough to have a strawberry patch like we are but we're gonna go down to the vegetable and fruit area and get picking best to pick strawberries when they're ripe so beautifully red in color and i know it seems obvious but i'm going to say it anyway remove any of the green stalks and any of the green foliage sealer just with the right fruit for this recipe we need about 500 grams of strawberries and it is a nice way to spend some time on a beautiful sunny day and we're all set with our foraged ingredients so that's eight large elderflower blooms and 500 grams of strawberries an important part of the preparation is sterilizing your brewing vessel we're using a small amount of supermarket basic thin bleach diluted with a lot of water it's enough to kill any bacteria or mold that might ruin the brewing mixture it should be left for at least 10 minutes and rinse thoroughly before adding any ingredients we're using a proper beer brewing bucket for our groove but in reality any lidded bucket will do the job [Music] on the elderflower blooms we only need the flowers themselves as the pollen they contain has all of the flavour the green stalks aren't needed so we're going to remove all those flowers into a bowl it's a very simple process just gently pulling them away from the stalks it doesn't matter if the odd petal is left on those stalks as long as most of the flowers are harvested the strawberries are just as easy to prepare they only need to be roughly chopped to help release the natural sugars and flavors for the brewing process we've now got the main flavors for our elder flour and strawberry champagne in a bowl there are a few other things we now need to add so let's have a look at those for our recipe we're going to add 200 grams of raisins just like the strawberries they need to be roughly chopped raisins add body to the wine giving it a bit more of a rounder texture now that we've removed the elderflowers from the blooms roughly chopped strawberries and roughly chopped sultanas all three of those can be added to the sterilized brewing bucket the next thing is to get some white sugar prepared we're using very very basic and cheap white granulated sugar we're going to dissolve that in a liter of water and that really needs to be warm water because it helps the sugar to dissolve a little bit faster now that's all in a bowl all we need to do is give it a stir until all that sugar has dissolved the sugary mixture then needs to be poured into the brewing vessel with your elder flowers raisins and strawberries as this recipe is for five liters of elderflower and strawberry champagne we're going to add a further four liters of warm water to the brewing vessel before we get to adding yeast to the mixture which is the main component for fermentation we're going to lower the ph slightly by adding two tablespoons of lemon juice this will help the yeast work at its best for this recipe we're going to use one teaspoon of brewer's yeast and we're going to add that to a small amount of orange juice to pre-activate it before we put it into our fermentation vessel and this is what we're looking for after a few minutes the yeast is activated and you can see a wonderful bubbly foam forming at the top of the orange juice that's ready to be added to the fermentation bucket as an optional extra we're going to add some of our homemade strawberry cordial which we made last year from a huge glut of strawberries the recipe will taste just as good without it so if you haven't got it don't worry we've now got the elder flowers the strawberries the sugar the lemon juice the raisins the yeast and the optional strawberry cordial all in that brewing bucket we're going to give that a really good stir ready for fermentation to begin this is the easy part we need to leave the yeast to act on the sugars in the mixture and turn it to alcohol at this stage it's important to cover the bucket as it will easily be ruined by flies particularly vinegar flies getting into the mixture as we are using a brewing bucket it comes with a lid and an airlock valve which allows gas from the fermentation process to vent without allowing vinegar flies in if you are using an ordinary bucket cover it with a tea towel or if you have a lidded bucket lift the lid periodically to vent any excess gas the mixture will bubble violently for a number of days but when that's complete and the bubbling stops for the primary fermentation this is what your mixture will look like if we look closely at the strawberries you'll notice that they're almost white that's because all of that lovely flavor and the color from strawberries is now in the liquid we can now move on to the next stage [Music] we need to strain the large chunks of fruit from the mixture we're going to use just a basic kitchen sieve over a funnel and we're straining the liquid into a five litre demijohn that's because we need to complete a second stage of filtering before we can bottle the liquid and this is what we're trying to remove at this first stage there should be no large chunks of fruit left before we start a finer filter in stage two of the filtering we need to remove the elderflower pollen from the mixture we do this by lining the kitchen sieve with the muslin cloth and normally we'll have three or four layers of that cloth for the liquid to strain through this time we'll filter immediately into one liter plastic pot bottles these are designed to hold gas liquids so they're absolutely ideal for this purpose and just so you can see why this stage is important this is the pollen that's strained out of the mixture to finish this step pop the lid on the bottle you'll notice that there's a little bit of give in the plastic bottle that's good and we'll need that for the next stage here's one of the great advantages of using a plastic bottle when you squeeze it now having squeezed it at the beginning you can feel that it's absolutely rock hard and that's because there's a buildup of gas inside the bottle you can also notice that the sediment from the yeast etc has started to settle at the bottom of the bottle now what we need to do is open that bottle and let some gas out otherwise it's going to explode but what that will do is stir up some of this sediment we need to do this for a good week until the bubbles are not massive when we vent it and at that point we pop it into the fridge chill it well let all the sediment settle out and when we open it because there's not as much gas it won't stir up the sediment let me show you get a hiss now watch sometimes you need to put the cap back on quick but this lots had a few days you can see lumps of sediment getting stirred up they'll soon settle down again but you can see one there's a process here that if you don't vent it it'll burst but when you do vent it it stirs up sediment so you've got to vent it enough that it's not foaming this violently then put it in the fridge chill it down let it settle and it will be gently sparkling when we put it in the glass let's have a closer look at that sediment being stirred up when we open this bottle if you look closely there's large lumps of white sediment moving around as a gas lifts it and stirs it into the liquid when you make a wonderful drink serve it nicely get a decent glass dip the rim in some lemon juice or lime juice shake off too many drops and then just frost it just a little and some icing sugar we could pour our elderflower and strawberry champagne straight into glasses but we prefer to decant into a jug that's because we're trying not to stir up the sediment at the bottom of the bottle it's one single pour and that means we're less likely to unsettle that sediment we're more likely to get a clear wine in our glass look at that now you can just see the bubbles rising through the liquid and that's actually a lovely warm orangey pink color all that's left is for us to pour ourselves a glass and look at that phase that's my recipe for strawberry and elderflower champagne i'm going to be honest and say i prefer it over straight elderflower i think having some fruitiness in it makes it a lovely summer richer drink than elderflower alone if you're enjoying this kind of content can you spare us five seconds click the thumbs up button just down there and if you'd like to leave us a comment what else you'd like to see on the channel we'd love to hear from you sloes are getting ready down there do you want to see slow gin or maybe blackberry brandy i was thinking of doing blackberry wine any interest in that if you're interested in those kind of videos hit the subscribe button and the bell next to it you'll hear as soon as we publish them but whatever you do come back and see us soon take care [Music] you

Channel: English Country Life

Views: 9,829

Keywords: GYO, Garden, Truck Garden, Smallholding, Homestead, Grow Your Own, Self Sufficiency, Good Life, gardening, english cottage, lifestyle, The Good Life, Hobby Farm, Country Life, smallholder, allotment, recipe, food preservation, pickling, fruit, wine making, winemaking, sparkling wine

Id: z8ttHTXC89s

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020