How to Make Elderflower Champagne
- Bev
- Jun 2
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 11
When the Elderflowers appear, Elderflower Champagne is the first homemade wine of the year for many homebrewers. Once you've made it once, you'll always want to make it! This post gives you an overview of elderflower champagne plus a tried and tested recipe.
Technically this is not really 'Champagne' of course, it is sparkling wine. And a very quick wine at that. But traditionally it has been known as elderflower champagne or, in more recent times, elderflower fizz.
Table of contents:
What is Elderflower Champagne?
Elderflower Champagne is a sweet, fragrant and lightly alcoholic fizzy drink. It is usually made with fresh flowers, though it can be made using dried elderflowers. It's a bit different than the usual homemade wines as it doesn't take long to ferment and is better drunk within weeks of being made.
How to identify Elderflowers
The common elder (Sambucas) is a deciduous tree which is usually in flower between May and early to mid July. Exactly when will depend on whereabout in the UK you are situated and how warm the weather has been. Because it produces such highly fragranced flowers before much of the hedgerow has really got going, it's quite difficult to confuse elderflowers with anything else. Having said that, the usual rules apply. Never pick something until you are very confident that your identification is right.
The flowers are creamy white, almost yellow and have 'frothy' feel about them. Each flower is formed of many tiny flowersin sprays on delicate green stems. Some of them will be as large as dinner plates. And your nose will definitely tell you when you have found what you are looking for - the pollen on the flowers smells heady, distinctive and quite beautiful.
I used to find elder identification quite difficult when it was at the leaf stage, with no sign of blooms or berries. But as soon as the flowers emerge and that familiar fragrance hits you, there's no doubt. The sprays of beautiful dark berries are easy to spot too. I use what3words to keep a note of where I find elder so I remember where to go back to when I want to make elderflower champagne, cordial or the host of other lovely things you can make with the flowers and berries.
Bear in mind that elder leaves are poisonous to humans if consumed. Only the flowers (either raw or cooked) or the berries (cooked only) are safe to eat.
How to forage and prepare Elderflowers for Winemaking
Elderflowers are best used very fresh, so aim to pick them on the day that you plan to make your champagne. The ideal conditions for picking are when it’s warm and dry. Avoid the flowers that are starting to ‘go over’, which means they’ve been in flower for a while. They will be starting to go quite yellow rather than creamy white and they won’t smell as nice.
If I plan to pick them, I take scissors with me and gently snip the flower sprays before dropping them into a bag. Otherwise you can use your fingers to pinch them off the bush. Avoid any flowers which have masses of blackflies on the stems, which tends to be an elderflower thing. A few blackflies on the flowers is fairly inevitable and they will wander off. But if there are masses of them, the only way to avoid getting those into your champagne is to wash them off. Washing the flowers means you wash most of that lovely pollen and fragrance down the sink, which is not what you want. So avoid flowers with masses of flies.
When you get the flowers home you will be separating them from the stems as they will make your elderflower champagne bitter. So it’s best to leave as much stem behind on the bush as possible.
Lay the flowers gently in a basket or soft bag so they don’t get crushed. Some flowers will start dropping off the stems immediately, so use bags without holes so you don’t find them everywhere but in the bag by the time you get home.
Once picked, elderflowers need to be processed quickly to maintain that iconic floral fragrance and pale creamy colour. If you put them in the fridge they’ll go brown, if you put them in the freezer they’ll go black. So keep them at room temperature. Lay the sprays out on kitchen towel or clean tea towels for a while to allow any creatures to crawl away.
Then use a fork or pair of scissors to separate the tiny flowers from the stems. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid having any tiny stems in there at all, just do your best. The less green you have on the flowers, the less bitterness will make it into the final wine.
What Equipment is Needed to Make Elderflower Champagne?
If you’ve never brewed anything in your life before and have no equipment, the good news is you don’t need much and you may have some of it in your kitchen already. You can go simple (a bucket and a few fizzy drinks bottles) or a bit more equipment designed to make the process quicker and easier (an elderflower champagne kit with a bucket and some other useful things).
Whether you choose to buy an elderflower winemaking kit or go with a food grade bucket only, elderflower champagne is a lot faster and less complicated than some wines can be to make.
Homebrewing kits are reusable. So once your elderflower champagne is bottled, you simply need to clean and sterilise the equipment and then you’re ready make something else.
The kit above contains PET bottles. Why? Plastic is recommended because elderflower champagne is notorious for explosions. As the fizz is made more quickly than a typical homemade wine, the living yeast usually makes it into the bottles and carries on fermenting. If you bottle your elderflower fizz in glass, you risk the pressure building and… you can guess the rest. If you bottle it in plastic, your efforts won’t win the Instagram Picture Perfect Bottles Award but you will be able to tell when the pressure is building when the walls of the bottles will become very tight. You release the pressure by turning the cap a little, though without fully opening it so you don’t let bacteria inside. Then you tighten it again. This is known as ‘burping’. Even if too much pressure doesn’t result in glass explosions, it can mean a forceful gush when you unscrew the cap and half your elderflower champagne ends up down the sink. So burping is the way.
If you buy plastic bottles designed for elderflower champagne making, you can reuse them. You can even reuse the caps or source new PET bottle caps each year. Of course you don’t need to buy plastic bottles, old fizzy drinks bottles are perfectly fine too and you're recycling them, which is always good.
If you really want to bottle in glass, make sure you keep the bottles in a place where no harm can come to anyone/anything, such as a garden shed well away from everything.
Elderflower Champagne Recipe and Method
Ingredients
About 10 large Elderflower heads (make sure that they are fully open). The more elderflowers you use, the more elderflower flavour you'll get in the end product. Before starting I lay them on a clean tea towel or kitchen towel to allow any insects the chance to run away.
1kg sugar
2 x Lemons with rind removed and kept - I use a potato peeler for this - and then juiced
5 x Tablespoons of White Wine Vinegar.
10 Litres of cold water
1 x sachet of Sparkling Wine Yeast (which is usually sufficient for up to 25 litres). I use Lallemand EC-1118 Yeast.
This recipe will make 10 litres, to fill 10 x 1 litre bottles. To make more, increase the quantities in proportion.
Method
Ensure all your equipment is sterilised using your steriliser of choice, or the one supplied with a kit if you have one, following the instructions on the label. Don’t miss this step out, if your champagne doesn’t turn out there’s a very good chance bad bacteria will be the reason though you’ll never know for sure. It is simply not worth the risk in my view.
Add 10 litres of warm water to the Fermentation Bucket.
Add 1kg of sugar and the vinegar to the water in the bucket. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Add the lemon rind and juice.
Remove the elderflowers from their stems, leaving as little green as possible for the reasons explained above. You can do this with scissors or the prongs of a fork works well too.
Add the flowers to the bucket gently, avoiding crushing the flower heads.
Sprinkle yeast on the surface of the liquid and stir gently. You don’t need the whole 5g in your sachet, or whatever quantity you have there. Typically a 5g sachet of Sparkling Wine Yeast is suitable for treating 23 litres of wine or more and this is a 10 litre recipe so I would use half the sachet.
Adding EC-1118 Sparkling Wine Yeast to the Elderfower Champagne Put the lid on the bucket, half fill the airlock chamber with water and insert it into the black grommet fitted in the bucket lid.
After a few hours the airlock will start bubbling as the fermentation releases air which escapes through the water in the airlock. Allow it to continue for 5-7 days or until the majority of the bubbling and fizzing has finished - how long it takes often depends on how warm it is. You can open the lid briefly every couple of days and stir the flowers back into the liquid with a sterilised spoon. If you do that, replace the lid quickly to reduce the risk of contamination.
Unlike a usual wine fermentation, you can start bottling before the fermentation has completely stopped - hence plastic bottles are recommended. Sterilise the bottles when you’re ready to bottle.
Position your bucket higher than the bottles enabling gravity to help you. Then using a homebrew syphon, transfer the champagne through a funnel into the bottles. Avoid disturbing the sediment so you transfer as little debris as possible. Whilst elderflower champagne is never clear, the less sediment you pick up the clearer your champagne will be.
Fill the bottles to approximately 1 ½ inches from the top of the bottle, screw the caps on. Store somewhere cool, burping occasionally to release the pressure (see above).
Ready to drink in about 2 weeks. It will get better with a bit more time. This isn’t like the wines you can leave for years though, it will not continue to improve indefinitely. The yeast will eventually use up all the sugar in the bottles which means that, in the end, the champagne will become very dry and may not be pleasant to drink. Keep an eye on it by having a bottle now and again, making a note of when it’s at its best for your taste so you know next time.
Elderflower Champagne Making - Final Thoughts
Elderflower Champagne is a great introduction to homebrewing if you’ve never made it before, and a fabulous ritual to add into your annual calendar. If you make a small batch, it will be a lovely summer treat to enjoy. If you make lots, you will be enjoying it into the autumn, perhaps even winter, as a reminder of that day when you picked them. What’s not to love?
Want to Learn More about Hedgerow Foraging?
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