I have 15lb of frozen elderberry. I just want to make a 1 gallon of wine for now. Could I have some advice and a recipe please? I just want to use elderberrys, raisins.
1 Answer
Here are a few recipes: http://www.wine-making-guides.com/elderberry_wine.html
I would stick with there rough guide of 3lb/gal, and I would use some sugar but if you don't want to add sugars then you are likely to be using about 5lb of berries and 2-3lb of raisins per gallon.
I would also freeze the raisins to break the cell walls and release the flavour and sugar.
I personally when making elderberry wine freeze everything, then take a large pan and add the berries/rasins/sugar into the pan, add boiling water to make it up to the gallon, and boil for 5 min, put lid on and allow to cool, then pour everything into a demijon, leave for 5 days, then rack off into secondary, and leave for another week for everything to sediment out the bottle and enjoy a couple of months later.
I no longer use Campden tablets as I have friends with allergies to sulphides, but you can use one rather than the quick boil.