Does anyone know why my elderflower 'must' has gone brown?

[cjm]

Hello

I started making my second batch of elderflower wine yesterday - put the flowers and lemon peel into the bucket with boiling water - and this morning I saw that the liquid had all gone dark brown. Does anyone know what's going on with it?

I didn't put lemon juice in straight away like I did last time, so it could be some sort of enzymatic browning, but the actual flowers still look normal coloured and it's just the liquid that is brown.

Anyway, it still smells ok so I don't know whether it's still worth trying to ferment it, or whether I'll just end up with horrible coloured/tasting wine?

Anyone got any ideas??

[Clara]

I don´t know anything about wine making, but I suspect what you suspect about the lemon is correct. In baking lemon juice is used to stop apples going brown (for instance when making a crumble).

I have no idea what will happen if you ferment it...

[cjm]

Thanks, so hopefully the colour change is harmless and I'm quite tempted to ferment it just to see what happens - however I am a bit short on space and it would also be a shame to poison myself!!

But then again I don't really want to waste it - It took ages pulling the little flowers off all their stalks...

[MKG]

Sounds like straightforward oxidation, as Clara suggested, because of the late addition of lemon juice. If it smells OK, I'd ferment it - and if it is oxidation, the brown colour will disappear during fermentation.

[Cligereen]

My must is now 24 hrs old and is a vivid, brilliant green! There were no stalks on the flowers, but I did notice that as I was pulling off the flowers, my fingers were a lime green colour. Presumably from the pollen. It also occurred to me that I should have had the must in a covered vessel. I left it for the first 16 hours or so uncovered in an aluminium preserving pan, and with only the lemon rind, no juice.

If the fermentation doesn't clear this, I'll have elderflower wine that looks like creme de menthe

[cjm]

I've now started fermenting it and the colour does seem to be improving a bit - now more beige than scary dark brown!

When I washed my hands after pulling the flowers off the stalks my fingers were stained a kind of 'nicotine brown' (probably by the pollen), so this could have something to do with it.

The moral of the story seems to be that it is important to add the lemon juice promptly!