Elderflower cordial

[Prebe]

I just finished the process. It is the essence of early summer.

40 heads of fresh elder flowers
750 g of castor sugar
The zest and juice (not rind!) of one lemon
3 l of water

Put the flower heads, lemon zest and sugar into a 10 l pot. Boil the water and pour it over while hot. Let cool on the table, add the juice of a lemon and steep in the fridge for two days. Strain through cell-cloth and pasteurize (at app. 80C) for 5 minutes. Pour in bottles and store cold. You can add benzoate which extends the shelf life to about a year (as oposed to roughly 3 months).

For consumption, add 1 part cordial to 2 parts water + slices of lemon and ice-cubes. THAT's summer!

For a hot summer night sipping a 1 to 1 mixture of cordial and gin (with ice cubes) can't be beat.

[Zarathustra]

Wow, I'd love to try that. I wonder how it would taste with some yeast after a few weeks.

[edit: I missed the gin part. That'll do!]

[Prebe]

It tastes pretty much like the smell of standing next to an elder in full bloom.

Fermenting it would be a fantastic idea I think. You'd have to go easy on the benzoate though

[Menolly]

For this non-brewer...
How does one pastuerize at 80ºC at home?

[Prebe]

Just stick the pot on the stove until it shimmers. It's just a fancy name for heating something below below the boiling point but heating it enough to kill off microorganisms.

[Wyldewode]

I wondering where to find the elderflowers.

My sister makes an amazing fruit wine. . . I'll have to get her recipe and share it here.

[Prebe]

Hedgerows, parks, decidous forests in temperate regions. I don't know how common it is in the US, but I'll bet that it is not seen often in the hotter areas of the southern states.

[stonemaybe]

Early summer, I always get jealous. We get so many old ladies coming into the pharmacy for citric acid to make their elderflower cordials and wines.

I am determined to have some sort of competition one year with me as the judge.

Pharmacy staff are trained to strictly only sell citric acid to old ladies. Anyone else buying it uses it to cut their cocaine.

[Menolly]

now hold on just one cotton-picking second
...what age is defined as old?

I use citric acid/sour salt in my cabbage soup.
And I seem to recall aliantha was looking for some at one point, bought some at Walgreens or some such, and then learned she could have gotten it far cheaper as sour salt at Wegman's or some grocer up there...

[aliantha]

It was a little local pharmacy, and yeah, it would've been a whole lot cheaper if I'd gone to Wegman's. I used it to make mozzarella cheese. (Hmm. Wonder if it would be worth trying that little exercise again....)

[stonemaybe]

Cabbage soup and mozarella would definitely be considered euphemisms for hard drugs!

[Menolly]

Cabbage soup and mozarella would definitely be considered euphemisms for hard drugs!

riiiiight

[Vader]

Early summer, I always get jealous. We get so many old ladies coming into the pharmacy for citric acid to make their elderflower cordials and wines.

I am determined to have some sort of competition one year with me as the judge.

Pharmacy staff are trained to strictly only sell citric acid to old ladies. Anyone else buying it uses it to cut their cocaine.

Did I metion I have a huge elder tree? We made tons of jam from the flowers. Now the berries are ripe and we can make more jam and syrop - which goes perfectly well with vodka.

[stonemaybe]

ok that's it! I'm retiring to Vader's granny flat!

[Menolly]

But only in the summer, right?