Elderberry Cyser Vinegar
Dad gave me this beautiful glass vessel for Christmas. It has a ground glass stopper at the top, and a delicate glass tap at the bottom which is also fitted into the body with a ground glass stopper.
It turns out to be ideal for storing elderberry cyser vinegar ready for use and bottling.
Here is how the vinegar was made. Loosely, at least - my notes are a bit scrappy.
19 August 2023 Picked apples from our cooking apple tree (our so-called “right hand tree”, pictured below).
22 - 23 August 2023 Pressed the apples to extract juice.
25 August 2023 Added yeast
Fermenting apple juice
31 August 2023 Picked 300 g elderberries and mashed them with a fork in boiling water. Steam extracted honey from 1.12 kg honeycomb from brood box, and combined with the yeasted apple juice in a demi john. Fermenting apple and honey together makes “cyser” - with the addition of elderberry I’m calling it “elderberry cyser”. At this point, elderberry cyser itself is the potion I’m aiming for, rather than the vinegar version.
26 September 2023 Racked the elderberry cyser to a new demi john. It’s bubbling and tasting sour.
4 October 2023 Racked it to another demi john with more honey, melted out of honey comb, with some additional yeast.
16 November 2023 Racked it again. Does it have a kind of liquorice taste?
30 March 2024 Racked it again. It’s tasting sour. Is anyone going to want to drink this stuff? Wonder about oxidising it all the way to vinegar.
1 April 2024 Started bubbling air through it, for a few days. Nothing much seems to happen.
20 April 2024 Lucy and Gen (of the orchard bees) kindly gave me a bottle of their own vinegar culture, from a vast fermenting bottle in their living room, which contains the mother culture.
21 April 2024 Added the vinegar to the elderberry cyser.
18 May 2024 Added more honey, put the demi john in the garage and forgot about it.
15 January 2025 Remembered it. Now it tastes like vinegar! Filtered it into the big glass bottle from Dad.
Bottles of elderberry cyser vineger
A new product!