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| Beginning of summer End of summer |
At the beginning of the summer I posted pictures of the Elderflowers I collected and linked to a cordial recipe. Elderberries are also edible and apparently have wonderful medicinal properties. The bushes that I collected from are luckily large enough that I was able to leave many blossoms on the trees and even after harvesting some berries, you'd never know any were missing. Happy Eating birds! So I froze the berries as I had read that this made them easier to remove from the stems. Perhaps, but there is still a lot of work to pick through them and I didn't help matters by freezing the bag full. Next year I will freeze the clusters on a cookie sheet to make life easier!
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| Frozen Elderberries |
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| starting to thaw! |
I debated making a syrup, but decided on a tincture instead as I feel like I have been making a lot of sweet things with the jams and jellies. Various recipes abound. They all seem to agree that you must use at least 80 proof alcohol to extract the goodness from the berries. Most recipes use vodka as it is tasteless, but I went with Sailor Jerry's rum instead. It is 92 proof and has sweet and spiced flavour that I thought would go nicely with the currantish flavour of the Elderberry.
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| Picked clean! |
The berries were put into a large glass jar and covered with the rum with a cap of about an inch. The mister will be glad that I didn't use all the Jerrys! I did give them a bit of a mushing to release some of the juice. Now to let them sit in a dark spot for 4-6 weeks. After it is strained I can bottle it and it will keep on the shelf much longer than a syrup would keep in the fridge - another reason I chose the tincture over a syrup/cordial.
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| Elderberry flavoured Sailor Jerry's! |
If you want to give the mixture to kids for cold prevention, add a 1/4tsp to a mug of boiling water and let cool before drinking. The boiling water will burn off any alcohol.
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