Elderflower Champagne Recipe

The short answer: elderflower champagne is not champagne. It is a lightly sparkling homemade drink made by steeping fresh elderflower heads in sugar water with lemon, letting it ferment for a few days, then bottling it so it carbonates in the bottle. A 1 gallon batch needs about a dozen flower heads, 1.5 pounds of sugar and one lemon, and it is ready to drink in two to four weeks.

The flowers give it a muscat-like perfume, the lemon gives it acid, and the sugar feeds the yeast. Nothing about it is complicated, but it is the one recipe on this site where the bottle matters as much as the brew, because the fizz is made by trapped gas. Read the bottling section before you start, not after.

It is also strictly seasonal. Elder blooms in late spring and early summer, so the recipe below is one to bookmark now and make when the blossoms open.

Picking Elderflowers

Be sure it is elder

Only pick from a plant you have positively identified as Sambucus, the elder genus. Use a regional field guide or ask an experienced forager or your local extension office, and if you have any doubt, leave the flowers where they are. Elder carries flat-topped clusters of tiny cream-white flowers, and it is one of those plants where being nearly sure is not enough.

When and how to pick

Galloway Wild Foods suggests picking on a sunny morning if you can, using heads in full bloom, shaking off the insects and not washing the flowers, since washing rinses away the pollen and the natural yeast that does the work in a wild fermentation. Choose bushes away from busy roads and away from anywhere that might have been sprayed.

Stems and leaves

Galloway Wild Foods notes that its author is comfortable using whole flower heads, green stalks included, while more cautious cooks can strip the flowers from the stalk; the site's own safety note says elder leaves, stems and berries contain alkaloids and the flowers only trace amounts. Given the Ohio State warning above, the simple rule is to pinch or snip the flowers off the main stalks and leave the stalks and leaves out of the bucket. It costs you a few minutes and removes the argument.

Dried elderflowers

If you cannot catch the season, you can use dried flowers. Galloway Wild Foods gives about 1 tablespoon of dried flowers for each good-sized fresh head. Jack Keller notes that dried elderflowers make a very good wine, though not quite as fragrant as fresh ones, and warns that too many flowers make an almost undrinkable wine, so do not go over the recipe amount.

Wild Yeast or Champagne Yeast?

Wild yeast, the old-fashioned way

The traditional recipe adds no yeast at all. Galloway Wild Foods says "the natural yeast in the flowers is doing the work," and that cool storage can delay the start. It is charming and free, but it is also unpredictable: one batch takes off in two days, another sits there for a week. The Gladwin Brothers recipe, which also relies on wild yeast, describes the result as a gentle drink at about 3% alcohol.

Champagne yeast, the reliable way

A pinch of champagne yeast makes the start predictable. Wild Food UK's brewer's method uses a sachet of white wine or champagne yeast for every 25 liters, rehydrated in a cup of warm water for about 5 minutes, so one gallon needs only a fraction of a packet. The Lalvin EC-1118 in the kit box below lists an alcohol tolerance of 18% and a range of 10 to 30 °C (50 to 86 °F), and the sachets are sized for 4.5 to 23 liters. Because it is a strong fermenter, add only the small amount above and keep a close eye on the bottles.

No commercial yeast at all

If you want to see how far you can go without a packet, our guide to making wine without yeast explains what wild fermentation does and where it can go wrong.

Bottling Elderflower Champagne Safely

This is the step to take seriously. The drink gets its fizz from fermentation that continues inside the closed bottle, so the pressure keeps rising until the yeast runs out of sugar or you cool it down. Galloway Wild Foods and Wild Food UK both say bottles can burst if the pressure is not managed.

Choose the right bottle

Galloway Wild Foods recommends plastic fizzy drink bottles with screw caps: you can judge the pressure by squeezing, and it warns that if the dimples at the bottom start to round out you need to release pressure urgently. It also says corks are not suitable because the pressure will push them out. Wild Food UK takes the opposite route: champagne or prosecco bottles with plastic corks and wire cages, noting that "champagne bottles are designed to take extreme pressures, up to 6 atmospheres," and it advises against ordinary wine bottles, beer bottles and swing-top bottles. Its author adds that plastic holds the pressure but lets gas escape over time, so the fizz fades within about six months.

The practical choice for a first batch is plastic, because you can feel what is happening. If you use glass, use champagne-style bottles built for sparkling wine and nothing thinner. Our guide to bottling and corking wine covers the standard still-wine bottles and closures, which are not what you want here, and the wine bottle calculator tells you how many bottles a batch fills.

Leave headspace

Galloway Wild Foods says to leave a few inches of air at the top of each plastic bottle, and Wild Food UK says to fill champagne bottles only to between 5 and 7 cm (about 2 to 2.75 inches) from the top.

Burp, then chill

Galloway Wild Foods advises that once you feel the pressure building, you should gently unscrew the lid every few days to decompress, and re-tighten it quickly, but not too often: "If you constantly depressurise, your champagne will become flat." Once it is fizzy enough, it recommends refrigerating the bottles to slow fermentation and reduce the risk of explosion, and still checking them, since forgotten bottles can burst.

How long it takes

Galloway Wild Foods puts the sweet spot at about 2 to 4 weeks, and says that by 5 to 6 weeks it may turn vinegary. Wild Food UK suggests waiting at least 2 weeks after bottling before drinking its yeasted version.

Still Elderflower Wine

If you would rather not manage pressure, make a still wine. It is a regular fermented wine in a jug with an airlock, bottled in ordinary wine bottles. The recipe below is Jack Keller's dried elderflower wine, from his Requested Recipes Collection. Keller says elderflower wine is usually made with fresh flowers but dried ones make a very good wine, and calls it an acquired taste that not everyone appreciates.

Elderflower vs Elderberry

Same plant, different drink

Elderflower champagne uses the blossoms in early summer. Elderberry wine uses the dark berries in late summer and autumn, and it is a deep red country wine with a very different flavor. The flowers are fragrant and floral; the berries are tart and winey. You can make both from the same bush in the same year.

Cook the berries

The Ohio State weed guide says raw berries are toxic while dried or cooked berries are not harmful, which is why elderberry recipes heat the fruit. The full method is in our elderberry wine recipe.

Other flower wines

If you like the idea of a wine made from blossoms, our dandelion wine is the other classic, and it is a still wine with no pressure to manage. Make and drink wine responsibly, and only if you are of legal drinking age.