Elderflower Champagne
The recipe I used came from bbcgoodfood.com and here it is below!
I bought a cheap brewers bucket from Wilkos and stored the champagne in an outside utility room that is always fairly cold and dark, I also kept the bottles in the sealed bucket incase they exploded while fermenting!! I used a Milton tablet to sterilise the bucket before use and I didn't have to add any yeast.
Ingredients:
4 litres hot water
700g sugar
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
(about) 15 elderflower heads- in full bloom
pinch of dried yeast (might not be needed)
You'll need:
Large container
muslin cloth
1. Put the hot water and sugar into a large container (a spotlessly clean bucket is good) and stir until the sugar dissolves, then top up with cold water so you have 6 litres of liquid in total.
2. Add the lemon juice and zest, then vinegar, then the elderflower heads. Stir gently.
3. Cover with clean muslin. Leave to ferment in a cool, airy place for a coupe of days.
4. Look at the brew at this point, if its not beginning to come a little foamy and obviously beginning to ferment, add pinch of yeast.
5. Leave the mature to ferment, again covered with muslin, for a further four days.
6. Strain the liquid through a sieve lined with muslin and decant into sterilised strong glass bottles with champagne stoppers or Grolsch-Sqyle stoppers, or, sterilised screw top plastic bottle caps. (a good deal of pressure can build inside as the fermenting brew produces carbon- so strong bottles and seals are essential!!)
