"Luc Volders" > wrote in message
news
> 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

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.



--

In South Yorkshire,
England, United Kingdom.