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Has anyone tried making elderflower liqueur? There seem to be a few commercial products (St Germain, The Bitter Truth, Chase) but I can only find one recipe online (this one). My plan is to follow the recipe for noyau, filling a jar with elderflowers and a sliced lemon (or two - or should that be the zest and juice to make remove bitterness from the pith?), pouring on a bottle of vodka and leaving for 2-4 weeks until the colour looks good. Then adding 300ml sugar syrup, bottling and allowing to mellow.


Update, using Holunderblütenlikör as a search term I have found more recipes (here and here). The first German link translates roughly as:

35 Elderflower heads in full bloom
3 litres water
50g citric acid
1kg sugar
3 bottles of schnaps or korn (3 litres)

The elderflowers are added to the water and citric acid and left for 24hrs. This is then filtered and the liquid mixed with the alcohol and the sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves and then bottle.

In the discussions there's talk about lemon juice instead of the citric acid and it's mostly a matter of cost.

From the second set of links, this recipe looks closer to mine but adds the sugar to the jar along with the elderflowers and the sliced lemon and a sliced orange (full ingredients list - 5 elderflower heads, 250g white sugar, 1 sliced lemon, 1 sliced orange, 1 bottle korn).

made a elderflower vodka last year just put elderflowers sugar and lemon in vodka and left it for a month or so
gave o lot away for christmas everone loved it

I've had a go at this and can report back that it's a liqueur well worth making.

Holunderblütenlikör
6-8x Elderflower heads
1x sliced lemon
1x bottle vodka
Light sugar syrup (300ml water, 200g sugar)

Strip the flowers from the heads and place in a clean Kilner jar. Use the lemon slices to ballast down the flowers, and pour over the vodka.

Leave as long as desired. I left mine for about two weeks (a couple of days short, I started the day after the first post). The smell in the jar will be a good indication of the infusion. The lemon scents come through within a day or two, and you're smelling for the elderflower to become apparent.

Strain (I gave the lemon slices a little squeeze to make sure there was some of the acid lemon juice in the finished liqueur), add the syrup and bottle.

The result is a pale yellow/amber (I'll set-up a table-top studio later in the week when I sort out some better bottles), with a pronounced elder/citrus nose. The elder comes through pleasantly in the taste along with a background sharpness from the citrus. Friends sampling it last night described it as bringing to mind the scent of new mown grass or hay. I'm starting to favour these spirit'n'syrup liqueur recipes, they produce a much lighter drink than the spirit'n'sugar method.

There are still plenty of elderflowers about at the moment (at least in East Anglia) so you can still give this one a go.

Checked the bottle this morning, a good filter is needed for this recipe. A slight sediment has settled out, probably pollen that made it through my usual reusable polyester filter. When I decant to presentation bottles I'll run it all through a paper coffee filter.

The finished result..



I need to do some more work on this lighting set-up. I was going for something very quick with a compact to put into a tutorial elsewhere, rather than get out the full kit.

Such a pity I (my body) can't process alcoholic drinks... sigh.

This looks absolutely lovely and delicious.