Elder flower time again.

This past week I’ve been driving around looking for accessible elderflowers that aren’t growing next to the busy main roads or motorways that surround me. I managed to spot some on a housing estate so I screeched to a halt, parked on the verge, pulled a carrier bag out of the boot and ignored the strange looks I got from local residents. I came home with a carrier bag full and spent the night stripping the flowers off with a fork. I then browsed the web for recipes andI used the recipe I used for the cordial last year andthe champagne recipe from river cottage :

ginger beer

I@ve read about ginger beer today. I’ve not really come across it but decided it sounded very interesting so now have a batch on the go. Not sure it will work coz I had the water in the fridge so probably too cold  we’ll see. I used this method taken from the self sufficientish forum:

Sterilise a glass jar with a lid.
Wash a piece of root ginger about the size of your thumb leaving on outer skin.
Chop it into tiny pieces and put it in the jar. – or grate it as I did
Add cool boiled water and a couple of teaspoons of sugar.
Leave in a warm place and after about a week you will see bubbles as the natural yeasts in the ginger root start to ferment the sugar. The mix should have a nice ginger smell. If it smells unpleasant, you have cultured unwanted bugs and you will need to start again.
Add a little sugar every day for the next week and when the mix is fermenting vigorously, strain to remove the pieces of ginger. The liquid is now your starter for making the first batch of ginger beer. I did not divide the plant the first time but for each subsequent batch I divided the plant as described in previous recipes.

but afterwards found  this one:

“Artisanal Home Soda Fermentation

So let’s get down to making lacto-fermented soda–the real thing. The first step is simply to realize that it is very easy. The minimum equipment is a glass fermentation vessel and the minimum ingredients are sugar, water and the culture. Mix them together and fermentation happens. To make it really delicious, though, some pointers are in order.

Step 1: Bring approximately 50 percent of your water to a boil and dissolve 1.5 cups of sugar in it for each gallon of soda you plan to make. If you are boiling roots in the water (see below), remove them before adding sugar. The sweet, somewhat viscous liquid you have now is called “syrup.”

Step 2: Pour the syrup and the remaining water into your fermentation vessel. I like to use the scalding hot syrup to sterilize my vessel, but be careful not to pour it in too fast or it could crack. The resulting diluted syrup is still too hot for the culture. You can either wait, or cool the syrup first by letting the pot sit in a sinkful of cold water before adding it to the vessel.

Step 3: Add any other flavorings, such as lemon juice (see below) to the diluted syrup.

Step 4: Making sure the syrup has cooled to body temperature, add about a cupful of culture for each gallon of water. You could add less culture, but the more you add, the greater the head start your beneficial bacteria have over any opportunistic invaders, such as alcohol-producing yeasts.

Step 5: Cover the vessel (it need not be completely airtight, but it can be) and let it ferment. Fermentation rate is highly variable. If you like a sweeter soda, four or five days might be sufficient. If you want to ferment out most of the sugar, allow at least 10 days. Some additives such as mint and honey tend to inhibit bacteria and drastically slow fermentation.

Step 6: Time to bottle! Brewing supply stores carry siphon tubes to siphon the soda directly from carboy to bottle, but if you are fermenting in a jar you can simply pour it into bottles or scoop it in with a glass measuring cup. You must have some way to seal the bottles, either with a bottle capper or stoppered bottles (both available at brewing supply stores). Do not bottle the thick layer of sediment at the bottom of the fermentation vessel.

Step 7: Carbonation. The soda continues to ferment in the bottles, giving off carbon dioxide gas. Since the bottles are sealed, the gas has nowhere to go. In stays in the bottle and makes the soda fizzy. Depending on how fast it is fermenting, 2-5 days is usually enough time to create the optimum level of carbonation. You can always open a bottle and check.

Step 8: Stopping fermentation. Now we have a problem, because if the soda continues to ferment the bottles will foam over or spray when opened. The bottles might even explode if left out long enough. So when carbonation is sufficient, it is time to stop fermentation by putting the bottles in the refrigerator. Not enough room? A cold basement will work too, slowing down fermentation but not quite stopping it. Usually soda will keep just fine in the basement for a month or more.

Step 9: Drink it! Lacto-fermented soda is an excellent thirst quencher and contains beneficial lactic acid, vitamins, enzymes and beneficial lactobacilli that can inhabit your gut, where they protect you against pathogenic bacteria and yeast.

Sidebar Articles

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Lacto-fermented sodas can be made commercially on a small scale. Illustrated here are two examples from Down Under. Phoenix Ginger Beer from New Zealand (left) is brewed from water, honey, ginger, lemon juice and yeast. Bundaberg Ginger Beer from Australia (right) is brewed from water, sugar, ginger and yeast but contains “food acid” and “preservatives.” The Phoenix Ginger Beer wins the taste test and proves that quality soft drinks can be made on a commercial scale.

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HOMEMADE SODA BASICS

The Vessel: A one- or two-gallon glass jar is fine, but if you want to make larger quantities you’ll need a glass carboy, readily available at brewing supply stores for under $20. The five-gallon size works best. For a few cents you can also purchase a water lock, which bubbles merrily away as your soda ferments. All utensils should be clean, but antiseptic cleanliness is unnecessary. Usually we rinse the vessel a few times with water and sterilize it with the hot syrup for next batch.

Other Equipment: You will need bottles with good stoppers–a strong, tight cork, a beer bottle top, or a stopper held down with a wire. These are available at brewing stores and also at places like the Container Store. You will also need a funnel or siphon for transfering the soda from the vessel into bottles.

The Water: Do not use chlorinated tap water, as this will inhibit fermentation. Most filtered or bottled water works fine. If you must use straight tap water, boil it to evaporate off the chlorine.

The Sugar: We have gotten good results with sucanat, rice malt, maple sugar, jaggery, honey, and apple cider. The flavor from rapadura or molasses is too strong for most people. Honey is delicious but is best used as a flavoring rather than the main sugar source, because apparently honey inhibits bacterial growth. Even at half strength, honey soda can take months to finish. You can use fruit juice, but for some reason commercial canned fruit juice, even organic brands, produce noxious results. Fresh-pressed apple cider produces delicious soda, although it will probably be slightly alcoholic (1-2%) due to natural yeasts on the apples. Remember that most of the sugar will be converted into lactic acid in the fermentation process. Use about 1.5 cups of sugar per gallon of water.

The Culture: You can use a bottle of soda from the last batch as culture, or you can make your own from scratch. Dice fresh ginger root into tiny cubes and put a tablespoon of it into a mason jar 3/4 full of water, along with 2 teaspoons white sugar. Add another 2 teaspoons each sugar and ginger every day for a week, at which time it should become bubbly with a pleasant odor. If it gets moldy, dump it and start over. Even a small amount of culture will start a batch of soda going, but it’s best to use at least a cup per gallon so that these beneficial lactobacilli can dominate before less desirable microorganisms have a chance.

Flavorings: The water used to dissolve the sugar need not be just water! You can use any herbal decoction to make soda with the flavor or medicinal qualities you are seeking. For example, to make ginger beer, boil sliced ginger root in the water, about one thumb’s-length per gallon of soda, for twenty minutes. Peppermint, spearmint, or other mint can also be used to flavor soda. Put the mint in boiling water, turn off the heat immediately, cover and steep. Lemon juice is a good addition to almost any soda flavor and seems to help preserve the syrup before fermentation gets going. Use approximately two lemons per gallon of soda, depending on juiciness. One of the favorite beverages in colonial America was root beer. Any roots can go into root beer, but the essential ones for flavor are sassafras and sarsaparilla. Sassafras in particular lends a pungent aroma and beautiful reddish color to soda, and is readily available throughout the Eastern US. Common medicinal roots like burdock, chicory, dandelion, and so forth tend to impart a strong mediciney “herbal” flavor to the soda. It’s the sassafras or sarsaparilla that make people say “Yum!”"

rosehip not medium

I transfered the rosehip must from the bucket to a demijohn tonight via a nylon seive as per the recipe. According to Mr Berry, it should be a medium wine – which I like – an SG reading results in the specific gravity being 0.990 or very dry – which I don’t like. I added 30g of sugar (no idea why; seemed like a good idea at the time) and repeated the SG reading with the same results.

Still continuing to try to revive the nettle wine, I have added more nettle wine must to the starter bottle. I had to relieve the pressure in the starter bottle over the weekend as it looked almost ready to burst. When the bottle is almost full and still fermenting, I will add it to the must and see what happens. It is still fermenting but very slowly.

The mead, marrow and youngs kit are all going at a steady pace now. The peach is still going bananas!

Winemaking day

I had every intention of making my mead today then getting out in the garden. When I got up it was drizzling, this became heavier and now it is tipping it down. So today has been a wine day. I washed and sterilised all the demijohns and a bucket for continually dropping equipment in. I started by making the mead which is now in a demijohn outside cooling down.

I’ve transferred the marrow into two demijohns. I read in Mr Berry’s book that if you need to top it up, you use a syrup of the same strength as that added to the original must so I’ve added a pint with 6oz (170g) of sugar added to each demijohn.

The peach was transferred to a demijohn which just leaves the prune and the rosehip (yuk!). I have taken reading from all the wine I’ve got going and put the results in a table:

Wine	Temp	S.G.	Notes
marrow wine 1	17	1.69	Decanted from bucket to demijohn. topped up with 1 pt syrup ( 6oz sugar dissolved in 1 pt warm water).
marrow wine 2	18	1.62	topped up with 1 pt syrup ( 6oz sugar dissolved in 1 pt warm water)
peach wine	19	1.89	Decanted from bucket to demijohn. Fermenting quickly
youngs wine	20	1.28	fermenting quickly still
mead
nettle	18	1.78	appears to have stopped
Elderflower
Rice & Raisin 1
Rice & Raisin 2
Rice & Raisin 3
Royal Elderberry		1.66	started in 2006, stopped over 12 months ago, left in shed. will  put in warm spot or add restart yeast.

It’s quite fun doing this but remember to sterilise everything in between taking readings or you might transfer bacteria around and spoil all of your wines.

Nothing much to report but a report on everything

Changed the time!
Its not Thursday it’s still Wednesday for me, although it is 10 to 2 in the morning) so I’ve altered the time this was published.

Home
Not much happening today. I spent a lot of it looking at finances and realising that we have none! It’s not helped by DFS not going to work – off again today because he “can’t be arsed with working for them lot”. In the meantime, Christmas is only a few weeks away and we haven’t even got a card – the kids want laptops which is impossible. Once I’d stopped panicking and getting upset, I tried to look for a solution instead of concentrating on the problem and I’ve decided there isn’t a reasonable solution. Become single again so I can make a claim, win the lottery, get DFS to go to work, get the miracle job that fits around school and pays decent money, tell all the finance companies that DFS made arrangements with (he has HP on 4 vehicles… don’t ask) that we’ve changed our mind. I think I’ll go back to crying.

Kids
DDJ had yet another school trip. This time she went to the Beatles museum and had a great day. I also sorted out which high school they will be going to. I can’t pick one but to be fair, I haven’t put any effort into choosing as I did for DSL. What’s the point? I spent ages looking at schools for him, we decided this was the best, he was bullied throughout and hated it. He wouldn’t move schools just in case the next one was worse except he’d lose his best friend too. He never did very well at school, he just went and got his head down but put no effort in and came aways with minimal grades. Both the kids want to go to this one and I think if they are happy, they should learn better. DSL continues to spent all of his days in bed. One day this week he didn’t get out of bed until after 6pm! Most days average between 3 and 4 pm. It’s really getting beyond a joke. When he is awake, he is playing a game either on his pc, his xbox or his ps3. What a life eh? He will be upset in a minute when I disconnect the internet – by the way, if anyone can advise me about a program that I can install to restrict users on a BT Home hub version 1.0, I’d be very grateful. I’ve rang BT and they tell me there is nothing I can do.

Garden
Back to the garden and nothing much has been done. At least it wasn’t raining today; it was bright with sunny parts but still a little cold. The chicken coop base went down, it’s almost planned now! I painted the sides, we burnt even more of the old shed and that’s about it. I put the last lot of wood for tonight in the firebin after midnight with a brilliant full moon making the fence almost glow in the dark. It was almost magical out there tonight. Everywhere had the silvery-blue sheen, the air was slightly crisp and it was so quiet. It was similar to how it is when it’s snowed. Then a big gust of smoke completely engulfed me and I choked my way back into the house.

The window sill garden is still operational despite somebody flooding the lettuce seedlings. I think there are 5 germinated. The beans have only just started to sprout in the bathroom and the peas are beginning to get leaves.

Wine
On the winemaking front, not much is happening. I’ve got 4 demijohns sterilising on the cooker ready to make mead and transfer some of the buckets of wine into. I’m sure the rosehip is turning to vinegar, it tastes awful. I’ll leave it and see. The youngs kit is bubbling away like crazy. I’ve videoed it and will add it to my list of things I want to add here. As to the rest,  I’m stirring whatever needs stirring and leaving whatever doesn’t.

Dog
Tonight is night 3 for Lexie sleeping in the porch. So far she hasn’t messed in there so that’s one step the right way. I thought I’d emptied it but she managed to destroy a new boxed catflap that I overlooked on the first night and the last night she managed to get a feather duster that was hanging up 7′ up the wall. I’ve no idea how. Now it is completely empty so I’ll see how that goes. I’m ashamed to admit, I still haven’t taken her for a walk.

Other
I’m 40 on Friday. Whenever I think about it I feel sick. Why won’t time stand still?

Youngs wine kit stage 2

Tonight was day 3 of the kit so I have topped it up with water direct from the tap. It is fermenting quite quickly. I have video (on my phone so terrible quality) that I might upload.

I am still stirring the prune and the rosehip. The started bottle for the mead is looking alright so I will probably make a start on the mead tomorrow.

prune wine & mead

Made a start on the prune wine tonight. I thought I’d bought dried but there were “ready to eat”. They were also over 3 months out of date. Oh well, I should imagine that it wasn’t always perfect fruit used in winemaking. So far all I’ve done is bunged it in a bucket with 4l water and a spoonful of pectic acid. I need to stir it now daily for ten days.

I’ve also made a starter bottle up for making mead. This is preparation of yeast to get it going before adding it to whatever you are making. In a saucepan I  put:

• 1 tbsp of malt extract
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp citric acid
• 300 ml of water

I bought it all to the boil, boiled it for a minute or two and then placed it all in the fridge. While it was cooling I sterilised a wine bottle. Once cool I used a funnel to add 1 tsp wine yeast to the sterilised bottle then poured the cooled malt mixture through the funnel (to clean any yeast through). I placed a cotton wool ball in the neck of the bottle and placed the bottle behind the TV (running out of places to put all this wine!). It will be there for three days and hopefully, the yeast will be thoroughly enjoying itself and multiplying rapidly.

The kit I started yesterday seems to be doing well and has a nice yeasty froth on it.

Note to self: Have borrowed 4 demijohns from mom who has loads! I can see this being a regular occurence but had to promise payment of alcoholic “samples”.

Youngs white wine kit

yesterday I bought a wine kit from WIlkinsons for £4.99. I am hoping to make it for Yule gifts. Reading the outside it said it contained grape juice concentrate and glucose syrup. Don’t believe them! I pulled the ring tab on the tin expecting nicely cartoned ingredients and almost spilt a vary full tin of gloop all over the place. I assume its the juice and syrup blended but not sure how much glucose is in it because I also had to add a sugar syrup. Inside  where the instructions are  – yep thanks for that it gives you a list of other items and ingredients you need, most of which I have but some of it I don’t such as potassoim sorbate and wine finings. I’m now wondering why this kit is faster than bunging a can/carton of grape concentrate in a demijohn with some water, sugar and yeast and leaving it to ferment. That’s all that I’ve done with this. I now need to leave it for 3 days then top the demijohn up with water. Anyone have any “fast” wine recipes that I can use to save buying these kits?

wine readings

Added yeast and citric acid to peach wine. SG peach: 1.200+ (off scale)

Rosehip day 4: SG  1.060 (actually frothing it’s bubbling so much!) Continue to stir daily. It smells fantastic. I wish you could capture a scent! It doesn’t taste half bad either.

Nothing to do with the marrow wine now. Lid is convex so need to adapt it to fit air lock.

Nettle has slowed down way too much but is still very sweet. Will check SG and consider adding more yeast (?)

RIce & raisin and elderflower are in the shed and fermenting way too slowly. The rice & raisin was very dry the last time I checked, I haven’t checked the elderflower.

marrow wine step 2 – plus the rest

It’s been 6 days today so I’m one day over the recipe recommendation – not bad for me. It’s taken all morning to strain the must using reducing sizes of filters. I’ve added the sugar and I estimate that about 1.5 gallon of must finally went in the bucket. I’m going to see if I have a grommet to fit an airlock and ferment it in the bucket. If not I’ll ask the lady on the market when I go later today to get the demijohns (used at £1 each). The SG is 1.110.

I’ve stirred the rosehip which smells gorgeous. I’ve just worked out how long they need to stay in the bucket for and I’ll need to transfer them the day after my birthday – my 40th (I’m dreading it. We have no cash so won’t be celebrating – commiserating – either).

I’ve finally boiled the dried peaches. They were supposed to be left for 12 hours and it’s been about 30. I gave a good mash too. The recipe didn’t say to do this but I thought I might get more flavour.  I left it to cool  bit while i went shopping. The lady on the market didn’t have any grommets or any used demijohns so I settled for a new lidded bucket, exchanged steves new boots (too small, wrong style) and came home. I then strained the peaches through a sterile old tea towel and left them to drip throught the towel while I cooked tea. Then the band holding the towel on the bucket snapped so I had to fish the lot out of the bucket and start again! It’s strained now so now it’s cooling overnight in readiness for the yeast tomorrow. I’ve found a bung I can use to adapt a bucket in the shed. It is the bung out of a plastic demijohn (which I can’t bring myself to use). I’ll drill a hole in the bucket lid and push it through.