Elderberry syrup (home recipe)
Elder is blooming again, charming people with its strong smell. Few friends asked me about how we make elderberry syrup at home, so I thought of opensourcing it;) Remember that every written part is important (I tried to bold the most important words).
Ingredients:
- 30 elderberry blossoms
- 5L of water
- 3kg of sugar
- big spoon of Citronka
- about six 1L glass bottles with non-plastic closure
Getting blossoms
Blossoms should be chipped with scissors right after all small blossoms group together. As recipe says, 30 medium sized blossoms are recommended, but extra 4 or 5 will do no harm. Blossoms should not be put in plastic bag while collected, since they are very sensitive. Blossoms should be carefully picked, since we are not washing them before making syrup, just make sure there are no bugs around.
Procedure
We take a big container dish, put about 5L of water inside (important, container should be able to hold atleast 6L if not 7L). Inside, place 30 blossoms and make them sink. Close the container with a lid and let it stand for one day.
Next day, use sieve to remove blossoms from container, put 3kg of sugar inside and mix it. You will notice sugar staying at the bottom of the container, that's normal. Let the container stay closed with a lid for one more day and in that time, mix it as many times as you remember. The goal here is to have no sugar the bottom of the container.
Last day, we only have to add Citronka. I belived it is selled only in Slovenia and BiH, try to get something similar (it's basically Citric acid ready to make drinks). Its really hard to say how much should be put inside the container, I used the whole bottle for resulting 30L of syrup.
Now, the syrup should be ready to be tasted. Notice that dosage for 2dl glass should be a little bit more than for syrups you can buy in stores. Add more sugar according to taste and mix. We are ready to put the syrup in bottles. There is no special magic, funnel and gauze ( to filter small parts that normally float in the syrup) are your friends.
At the end out of 5L of water we get about 6-7L of syrup.
Release
Finally we have 30 bottles of our beloved syrup:
