Elderberry secret: an easy harvesting method

The elderberries are just starting to ripen over here. And I already picked about 4 kilo !! Now you can make an excellent wine from elderberries (even a port-like wine) but you have to take care of some things: a) Elderberries HAVE TO BE COOKED as there is sambunigrin acid in them which may be poisonous to some of us. By cooking the elderberries for 15 minutes the sambunigrin acid will decompose and the berries are perfectly safe to sonsume (or make wine). b) You have to separate the ripe berries from the unripe. Now you can do that by hanpicking (a tedious work) as you will know the difference from color: greens are unripe black and deep purple are ripe. But the easiest way to seperate ripe from unripe berries I learned from an old winemaker. Pour a bottom of berries in a bucket and pour cold water over them. Now stir well and the unripe berries will float atop. Ripe berries have a higher sugar content and therefore will submerge. Unripe berries have a lower sugar content and therefore a lower SG and will float. For a photo session, floating berries and my recipes visit please my web-log because it is to much to publish here.

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Luc Volders

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Luc Volders
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Wow, didn't know about sambunigrin acid. I'm about 1/2 done with a Elderberry port - and used dried elderberries. Did I need to boil them as well? oops.

DAve

Luc Volders wrote:

Reply to
Dave Allison

I'm just about ready to start 4 gallons of Elderberry wine from concentrate, so this thread certainly caught my attention. I did a little research online and it turns out that elderberries *are* *not*

*poisonous*. Some people are sensitive to sambunigrin, which in fact is a cyanogenetic glycoside and not an acid. It occurs if far greater quantities in the leaves than in the berries.

If you are not sensitive to sambunigrin, and you are not making your wine from Elderberry leaves, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Of course, don't take my word for it. I'm not a chemist nor do I play one on TV. Google for these terms and see what you can come up with.

Greg G.

Reply to
greg

Dave:

There are several poisonous plant databases administered by universities, gov't angencies and Canadian sources available on the net. You can do the research yourself for the species you've used.

Comments on the port? Would you recommend elderberry port?

Steve Oregon

Reply to
spud

Maybe there is a difference in the European and US varieties but I did some checking myself and this is what I found on wikipedia for example (just serch wikipedia for sambucus):

Uses Both flowers and berries can be made into elderberry wine, and in Hungary an elderberry brandy is produced (requiring 50 kg of fruit to produce 1 litre of brandy). The alcoholic drink sambuca is made by infusing elderberries and anise into alcohol. The berries are best not eaten raw as they are mildly poisonous, causing vomiting (particularly if eaten unripe). The mild cyanide toxicity is destroyed by cooking. The berries can also be made into jam, pies or Pontack sauce. All green parts of the plant are poisonous, containing cyanogenic glycosides (Vedel & Lange 1960).

Now wikipedia is not the only source. Search with google for elderberry and poison

And of course there might be only a low quantity of sambunigrin in the berries, and you might not be sensitive or have an issue with it, but you might present a glass to someone who is sensitive. Better safe as sorry.

I love elderberry wine. I make as much as possible each year, and it is my favorite wine but I always cook them and will not take any chance how small it might be with health issues. Cooking is such a small effort and reduces all risks. So what's the problem anyhow.

Luc

Reply to
Luc Volders

Thanks, I've found several sites from looking. This helps, though none mention specifically dried elderberries, i guess it would apply.

Yes, my goodness, the Elderberry Port is a success, though it is still needing a few months in the bottle. After doing this, I started the Cherry Port (mentioned in another thread) which is also good, but not as good as the initial Elderberry Port!

DAve

spud wrote:

Reply to
Dave Allison

And really make your next batch from elderberries and add some blackberries. If possible 50-50. That's my personal favorit. It really is heavy port-like wine.

Luc Volders

Reply to
Luc Volders

I am amazed at this ridiculous statement I am 70 years old and have made elderberry wine ( 4/1 elderberries/blackberries) for some 40 years. My oldest elderberry wine is a 20% abv fortified elderberries of 1991 vintage. Sadly only 4 bottles left. My youngest elderberry that is just about becoming drinkable is a 2002 fortified elderberry of which I have 60 bottles ( not bottled yet)

I definitely do NOT repeat NOT COOK elderberries. Cooking fruit can still make pleasant wine but it makes a very different flavoured wine. I have NEVER EVER cooked my elderberries because of any possibility of poison -- what total and utter rubbish is being spouted by the OP.

It is however essential to remove unripe and green fruit and the multitude of stalks for a trouble free result.

Cooking fruit was an old fashioned method of killing off wild yeasts -- these days we hit them with a meta solution to give our introduced yeasts a good head start.

But cooking elderberries is just not necessary. They are not poisonous but because of their very high tannin are not suitable as an individual fruit to be eaten raw or cooked on their own.

Reply to
Trevor A Panther

Hi Trevor! How's the cycling? I never made elderberry but the winemaking reference I have from Penn State (an agronomy school) does not suggest cooking them either. Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio
Reply to
Trevor A Panther

A very easy way of denaturing anything unpleaant in a lot of fruit is to steam the berries to extract the juice. This also has the advanatge of sterilising the fruitjuice and removing the need for capmden tablets - let's keep it as nature intended! (P.S without meaning to cause offence I think the worry about this spurious acid is a little OTT - unless you're drinking gallons in a sitting, or your parents were cousins in which case any additional risks just aint worth it).

Reply to
Anaesthetix

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