Elderflower Champagne & R&O Wine

Elderflower Champagne day 2 I was going to make elderflower champagne following the post from here but decided to try this one instead. Ingredients 6 large heads of elder flowers – make sure that they are fully open, preferably facing the Sun 1.2kg of sugar 2 lemons 4 tablespoons of white wine vinegar 10 litres of cold water How I made elderflower champagne After the very wet year we’ve had so far, I couldn’t be choosy about my flowers; they had started to drop, a few were turning brown and they were picked early yesterday evening between rain storms The flowers were placed in a saucepan late last night and 8 pints of water was poured over them. 2 lemons sliced were added This was covered and left 24 hours Tonight, I’ve transferred the must to a 10l fermenting bucket, the white wine vinegar added and then the bucket topped up with water to 10l under the tap 1.2kg sugar was added and everything stirred until the sugar was completely dissolved. The SG read 1044 at 23oC. The actual SG according to the calculators here is 1046. If I can stop the fermentation at around 1000, it should have an alcohol content of 6.1%. I assume that there will be an icrease to this figure when I prime the bottles but I’m not sure how to calculate that yet (I will have to update my post if I find out…) I placed the lid back on the bucket and will stir it regularly over the next 24 hours and wait to see little bubbles. If no bubbles have appeared by Tuesday morning I will add  yeast and some nutrient. From then I will leave it a week and then strain it into a couple of demijohns (or plastic water bottles) and leave it to ferment for a week or two until its hit 1000 but before it clears too much. Then I will syphon it onto primed 2l bottles at the rate of 1/2 tsp sugar per 1l if it’s 1000 as discussed in this thread or 1tsp if it’s 990. The again following the suggestion in the thread, I’ll leave it in a warm place for a fortnight before storing (horizontally) in the cold. 9/7/12 – no sign of fermetation so I added a tsp youngs wine yeast compound but left the must in the bucket 10/7/12 – the lid of the bucket is bulging this morning showing signs of fermenting. Rhubarb and Orange day 2 8/7/12 I strained the rhubarb and orange fruit juice to a demijohn.To get as much juice as possible I put it into a colander and pressed it out into a bucket first but it didn’t go well and the colander kept falling in the bucket! What I extracted I put into a demijohn and topped up with water to the shoulder of the demijohn. I then added 2 tsp of pectolase. I think I should have added the pectolase before now; probably with the fruit after I’d added the sugar as the pectolase breaks down the cell structure and helps to extract more juice as well as helping the final wine to clear by reducing the risk of a pectin haze. I will now leave it in the kitchen for 24 hrs before adding the yeast. The SG (temp corrected) is 1086 so at 1010 (medium dry) the ABV should be 10.1% . Oh and it tastes lovely already!