On Friday my neighbour and I went off to visit my BIL to see the plastic bottle greenhouse they had built at his school (he runs the gardening club and the eco garden there).
Here’s a quick look at the greenhouse ^^ I think they look great.
On the drive back, I thought I spotted an elder tree in flower so we did a quick u-turn and went back to have a look…
We were pretty sure it was the right thing, and by luck or design I had my Collins Gem – Food For Free
pocket sized book with me, so based on what the book said and what we thought, we decided it was elderflowers so we picked some to experiment with.
I really wanted to try the Elderflower Champagne from Grow Your Own Drugs: A Year With James Wong
book (which by the way my mum is convinced is about “drugs” and is going to turn me into some kind of pot farmer!) so I put everything together following the recipe in the book.
basically water, lemons, sugar and flower heads. I think the recipe called for about ten flowerheads but I put in quite a lot more. I was concerned it might not have enough taste. You leave it for two days covered over with a tea towel or something and during that time, it stops smelling like cat pee and starts smelling like perfume. Result!
Here’s a close up of the elderflowers.
Today, I strained the flower mixture and managed to fill 7 x 750ml bottles with it.
This is a mixture of old wine bottles and old lemonade bottles (Fentiman’s dandelion and burdock) The important bit is that they need to be screw top as other types might explode and we don’t want that. Now we have to leave it alone for about three weeks and it should turn into fizzy slightly alcoholic champagne.
I would also like to find out how to measure the amount of alcohol in something just to be on the safe side!
