How to Make Homemade Elderberry Syrup | Roots and Refuge Farm

hey guys what's up its just welcome back to my kitchen here at roots and refuge farm today I want to show you guys how I make elderberry syrup and encourage you if you're not already making this and using this in your household that it's time to start I've actually been making a elderberry syrup for a good while now probably close to 10 years not to be like a total hipster about it but I've definitely been making elderberry syrup since before it was cool back then if you didn't make it yourself you didn't have it now you can go to like big-box stores there are lots of elderberry products it's definitely taking an upswing people are really becoming more knowledgeable about how beneficial elderberry is and I think that's great it's great that it's becoming more accessible however you can save a lot of money making this on your own at home so why would you want to and elderberries are packed with antioxidants and they're very very beneficial to your immune system this is food medicine herbs and food are so important in the health of our body and so when it comes to any sort of like holistic remedy you have to approach it with a very reasonable mindset for instance you can't eat like garbage not sleep not take care of yourself and expect to take elderberry syrup once one afternoon when you first start getting the flu and not get sick this is something that you do as a lifestyle you overall you stay hydrated you rest well you feel your body well and then you get to use food medicine and herbal medicine and partnered with an overall healthy lifestyle it really makes a big difference in keeping your body well that said if you know that overall your lifestyle is not where you want it to be start making these small steps in the right direction and don't be like oh I'm not going to bother with that because I fast food do this too it's gonna it's still gonna help but it's not a magic pill this is something that I think that everybody can benefit from it's something that we heavily rely on especially this time of year so you can buy a pound of the older berries they come in a bag like this I get them on Amazon between 20 or 25 dollars depending on which supplier you buy them from I do get the organic once and I want to say this bag is like $23 I'll put a link down below to this and you can purchase there our affiliate links can help our channel what I do anytime that I get any sort of like herbal medicine or herbs anything like this in they always come in these bags and I always open them up and then put them in a mason jar with the lid so that they're sealed and they stay fresh longer this bag this 1-pound bag that was $23 it had five cups of elderberry in it and the recipe that we're gonna use today calls for 2/3 of a cup basically the breakdown is you're going to get about five batches out of this bag and also the recipe calls for 1 cup of honey and I like to use a local raw honey because that has a lot of benefits in it as well as this jar has about 5 cups in it as well and this was I think $13 basically for the 2 main ingredients which is elderberries and honey I'm looking at about $8 for a batch and I add a few other things in that which is gonna bump the price up a little bit but there are things that I always keep in my house and each batch makes roughly 3 cups of elderberry syrup so you're talking about a lot of savings so $8 for three cups of syrup versus if you go to the store and buy a premade bottle you're looking at like $10 for something like maybe 8 to 10 ounces so it's definitely savings and you've got this stuff to make about five batches whenever you buy all this if you have a big family if you're really going to be going through this stuff if you want to start taking it daily kind of as a preventative to kind of just give your immune system a boost it's definitely more prudent to make this home yourself so other things that I'm gonna put in my elderberry syrup other than the honey and the elderberries these are the main ingredients is I always throw a few cinnamon sticks in this I have at the house some ground cloves you could use whole clothes if you have that you're just gonna strain them out before you crush everything down but I go ahead and use ground cloves ginger shred it down and cook it in there you could use powdered ginger if you wanted to I think using fresh probably has some better benefits and then another thing that I like to throw in and this is something that I always have because this is just what I keep in my herbal medicine cabinet is rose hips because they're really really high in vitamin C I'll link these below too but don't feel like you have to have all of this to make it worth it the elderberries and the honey or the the primary thing the wonderful thing about food medicine is that it's not an exact science I'm giving you a recipe it's around about actually very rarely use measuring cups for this a viable I eyeball everything and it works for us but that's the great thing about food medicine now do keep in mind that if you have a baby that is under the age of 1 you're gonna want to use maple syrup instead of honey and you might just taste it and see I don't know if it would be an exact measurement we use a cup of honey I don't know if you'd want to use a whole cup of maple syrup but babies under one can't have honey so definitely change that out if you have a baby in the family and you want to be able to give this product to the baby as well the only thing that really requires my threat is spreading this ginger which I've already peeled it as you can see and I'm looking for about 2 tablespoons of this and you can shred it finer if you want to but it really doesn't matter I'm just gonna go ahead and put the rest of this mob in here because I've already got it peeled I don't wanna waste it all right so I've got all my stuff here and I do apologize for the light it kind of got dark with me not used to the time chain yet I've got a stainless steel pan this is that's for what I'm gonna show you next so I've got three and a half cups of water I've got my rose hips about half a cup of rose hips I've got the three quarter cups of elderberry a few tablespoons of ginger three cinnamon sticks and I've got my ground cloves and I'm just going to put all of this stuff in this pan a little shake and I'm gonna turn this on to like medium high and I'm gonna bring this to a boil it's not gonna take very long as soon as it comes to a boil I'm gonna turn it down to low cover it and I'm gonna cook it for about 45 minutes just on a low simmer so I'm actually making two batches I've got this one going on the stove but I've already done this once today oh that's gonna cook down and once it's done you're gonna end up with those little hard berries gotten really soft after being cooked down for about 45 minutes and what you do at that point is I usually take a big spoon and I just mash it really good and you're gonna press it through like a fine mesh sieve and just press as much juice as you can actually have a masticating juicer and I'll usually take the cinnamon sticks out and once that stuff is cooled down I will actually run it through my juicer and let that press it all out you don't have to have that but if you do have one you can do that and what I end up with is about two cups of this juice and it smells really good fruity and kind of spicy and now I'm just going to put a cup of honey directly into this and I'm just gonna mix this honey in really well now I do usually go ahead and make a couple batches at a time and I usually just double your recipe today I split it up so that I won't be able to show you guys the process all at the same time and I use this little glass jar here I bought these actually for our kombucha these are the swing top jars but I like to put my elderberry syrup in them and she's a little funnel and pour it in so making two batches of this is gonna feel almost three of these jars so it really is that simple and now everybody always asks well what's the dosage how long does it last I've never had it go bad with our family we go through it pretty quickly if you are concerned about not getting through it fast enough cut the recipe in half another thing that you can do when you're going in and you're purchasing because obviously you've got to buy the bag of elderberries on the front end which is twenty-something dollars and the big jar of honey find a friend that's local to you or a few friends and split the cost if you only feel like you need like one batch for the season then split the cost of all of this stuff and you really can't bring your costs down as far as dosage goes this is not an exact science it is food medicine and I don't want that to be frustrating to you I want that to be empowering what we do is I will take a spoonful of this every morning no matter what no matter how I'm feeling throughout this time of year whenever germs are rampant everybody gets a spoonful of elderberry syrup every day if I start to feel a scratch in my throat or kind of feel feverish or just not very good I start taking it several times a day I'm just taking a spoonful you know every couple hours every time I open the fridge every time I think about it I'll take a spoonful of elderberry you're not gonna overdo it it's not the kind of thing that you can overdose on it is it's full of honey so I mean keep in mind how much sugar you're consuming if you're concerned about that so yeah that's that's pretty much it it really is super simple I will link the stuff down below I do encourage you to try to find local honey if you can but this is such a simple thing I definitely a big benefit and if you are trying to get more into natural remedies this is a really really great place to start so I hope this helps you guys thank you so much for hanging out with me today I bless you until next time [Music]

Channel: Roots and Refuge Farm

Views: 79,231

Keywords: elderberry, homemade remedies, holistic medicine, natural remedies, herbal medicine, roots and refuge, roots and refuge farm, hobby farm, homesteading, homesteading channel, homesteading vlog, small farm, sustainability, how to make elderberry syrup, elderberry recipe, natural cough medicine, how to make cold medicine

Id: 8IkaaE06VS4

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019