Elderberry Wine

We started making wine from the blue elderberry we gathered earlier this fall. It's our third year making elderberry wine and so far we've been very successful. This year we gathered 30 pounds of elderberry so we'll make a 5 gallon batch as usual and then we'll try another batch without adding so much water.

We put the elderberry in the freezer for a while because it makes separating the berries and the twigs easier. Then we put the berries in a 5 gallon bucket and added 5 quarts of sugar water. We don't use chemicals in the wine so we have to be very careful about sterilizing everything by pouring boiling water over it.

Now the yeast is bubbling away, eating at the sugar. This primary fermentation is aerobic but in a few days we'll transfer the wine into a carboy and put an airlock on to start the anaerobic fermentation.