elderberry stalks

[banoffee]

hello,

i was wondering if it's alright to leave little stalk remnants on the elderberries for making wine? i've stripped them from the main stalks using a fork but there are some with little bits of stalk still in them, just a few millimetres. i've been gentle in stripping them and not just yanked them off the stems but if i wanted to completely get rid of them i would have to sit there picking the berries off one by one. i'm asking because apparently the stalks are full of cyanide, and i'd rather not poison myself and my friends! is it something to worry about and should i resign myself to sitting there for several hours picking at berries one by one, or is it not something to fuss over?

[Green Aura]

I've never made it, but my Dad used to and he did just as you said, with a fork. I'm still here so I'm guessing it was OK.

However, MKG will probably give you a more considered answer at some point.

[Gem]

The little stalks on the fruit are not poisenous, just the bigger woody main plant stems so it shouldn't do you any harm.

I'm not sure if it affects the flavour as I have never managed to get all the stalks off.. Tastes fine to me tho..

[MKG]

Apple pips are packed full of cyanide too. Well, when I say packed full, I mean they have some in there. Well, when I say some, I mean very little. So little that you'd probably need to eat about 20 kilos all at once to even notice the slightest of effects. The same applies to rhubarb and oxalic acid, and no-one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever died of rhubarb crumble poisoning. Vitamin A is actually heftily toxic - but how many people do you know who worry about carrots (but beware polar bear liver!)? So ignore the cyanide tale. However, the stalks do contain an awful lot of tannin and little else so, if there's too much stalk around, you'll get too much tannin - it's as simple as that. That doesn't mean, though, that you have to get your tweezers out to remove every last bit.

I've made elderberry wine after spending hours removing the minutest traces of stalk, and it didn't taste in any way different to the wine I made where I'd just passed a fork over the berries. It's a bit like a recipe calling for you to boil something for a couple of minutes as opposed to sustaining it at a temperature of 100 degrees for 120 seconds. There's such a thing as overkill.

Strigging - the proper term for stalk removal - is a nice, short word. If the people who developed that word had been forced to go any further, the word would have come out as berryhell, or something similar, and the elderberries would have stayed on the trees for the birds.

Mike

PS - I've made an elderberry wine in the last month where, out of curiosity, I just dumped the bunches of berries, unstrigged, into the bin. It tastes MARGINALLY heavy on the tannin, and that's an awful lot of stalk.

[ADG]

i made some pear and elderberry jam took about an hr tho to soften the pears gave it a nice tang and a gorgeous scent

[banoffee]

excellent, i thought i'd have to give up!

i like the word "strigging"

[Rosendula]

John Seymour in his big book said he didn't worry too much about it. That's good enough for me.