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






On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:36:41 -0400, Dave Allison
> wrote:

>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:
>> 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.
>>
>> http://wijnmaker.web-log.nl/
>>
>> Luc Volders