Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption
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wildfoodie
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freezing elderflowersanyone tried this? My friend has asked me to make some ef champagne for her wedding end of July, and was wondering about freezing the heads and using them for a batch nearer the time.
all feedback welcome! 
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gil
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seems to work OK.
though they don't really freeze from one year to the next, so using in the next few weeks is good.
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wildfoodie
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fab! thanks Gil,
and another question, do you or anyone think the recipe would work using fructose instead of sugar? (my friend doesn't eat sugar)
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cab
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| wildfoodie wrote: | fab! thanks Gil,
and another question, do you or anyone think the recipe would work using fructose instead of sugar? (my friend doesn't eat sugar) |
Fructose is sugar, just a different sort of sugar 
Sucrose, the sugar you normally buy, is a dimer of one glucose molecule and one fructose. Fructose is kind of like the same thing, and kind of not. Weight for weight I belive that it is sweeter, for a start.
Anyhoo, it should work but I'll sound a word of caution; while yeast can metabolise it, so they should be able to use it to grow and produce gas for elderflower champagne, you may find that the end result is sweeter than you'd wanted 'cos remaining fructose will be sweeter. You'd then think 'well shall I just reduce sugar content then', but then of course you may not get the same fizz or feel to it.
I reccomend experimenting, and letting us all know how you get on!
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wildfoodie
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will do! thanks for the info, very useful.
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wildfoodie
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ok, here's what I discovered...
retrieved frozen elderflowers from the freezer - (just bunged 'em in in a tupperware ) nasty looking brown and shrivveled. didn't wait to see if they worked - they went on the compost. 
A herbalist friend suggested I put them in water and freeze that to preserve them better .. any thoughts
have a batch of fructose ef champagne, I used 750g fructose to 4.5 litres water.
after 3 days it was still looking very still so I added a small amount of baking yeast to get it going - and boy did that work! Now ethically I suppose I should tell my friend that the yeast only got going when I added a bit of sugar to the yeast and mixed with warm water - initially it had a very lukewarm response to the fructose /lemon juice elderflower liquid.
Interesting - is the glucose bit of sugar a catalyst for the yeast? the yeast has been active for about a week now - so I'm thinking it must now be working on the fructose as I only added a dessert spoon of sugar. It's still pretty sweet so I'll see how it matures. I bottled it with a fair amount of lees so hopefully over the next month it will get a bit more alcoholic and slightly drier.
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gil
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| wildfoodie wrote: | ok, here's what I discovered...
retrieved frozen elderflowers from the freezer - (just bunged 'em in in a tupperware ) nasty looking brown and shrivveled. didn't wait to see if they worked - they went on the compost.
A herbalist friend suggested I put them in water and freeze that to preserve them better .. any thoughts
have a batch of fructose ef champagne, I used 750g fructose to 4.5 litres water.
after 3 days it was still looking very still so I added a small amount of baking yeast to get it going - and boy did that work! Now ethically I suppose I should tell my friend that the yeast only got going when I added a bit of sugar to the yeast and mixed with warm water - initially it had a very lukewarm response to the fructose /lemon juice elderflower liquid.
Interesting - is the glucose bit of sugar a catalyst for the yeast? the yeast has been active for about a week now - so I'm thinking it must now be working on the fructose as I only added a dessert spoon of sugar. It's still pretty sweet so I'll see how it matures. I bottled it with a fair amount of lees so hopefully over the next month it will get a bit more alcoholic and slightly drier. |
Ah, sorry - forgot to mention that they will not look good when you defrost them. However they are fine to use re flavour.
re yeast - it is better to start a fermentation by making a yeast starter : yeast in a bit of warm water plus a teaspoon of sugar left to start working, before you add it to the main fruit/sugar mix.
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cab
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Generally speaking, you get a better appearance to frozen flowers if you freeze them in ice; sometimes we'll do that with assorted flowers for funky looking ice cubes (a borage flower, a violet, a rose petal, etc.). But to thus freeze sufficient elderflowers and maintain flavour... Well, give it a go. My gut feeling is that you don't maintain as much flavour this way, you lose a lot of it in the water/ice, so use the ice neat in whatever you're using the flowers in. A better approach to maintain flavour would also be to add some sugar; again, its just a gut feeling, but its a way of maintaining functionality when freezing complex biological materials, sometimes sucrose (sugar) is added, most often glycerol is used (which you don't want to use here for various reasons). Of course, trehalose might be best of all, but unless you've got a pile of sugar bottles as used to smash stunt men over the head then you're unlikely to have trehalose, and off hand I have no idea whether the yeast can metabolise it (I strongly suspect that they can, but don't know for sure).
Regarding the sugar thing you had wildfoodie, thats almost certainly all about activating the yeast rather than the sugar being a catalyst. I'm with Gil on that one.
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colour it green
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I froze elderflower champagne concentrate (my recipe is slightly different to most others in that I dont make it in a bucket, but make it in bowl, then dilute with water when it goes into bottles, along with the yeast). Then we made elderflower champagne for Christmas last year, tasted just great, (and there was something apt about having a glass of 'summer' on the winter solstice...)
Already got a batch in the freezer for next Xmas.
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wildfoodie
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nice idea colour it green!
my second batch of fructose champagne got going very soon after mixing up - and no yeast needed. I also reduced the fructose to 500g per 4 litres. thats way less than the equivalent in sugar... but it tastes gorgeous - and feels somehow lighter than efc with sugar version.
I've now got 12 litres stored in a fridge at work ( colleague Dave who nearly lost an eye when opening ef champagne bottle a couple of years ago) is VERY nervous! the fridge temp is around 6-9C and so far I'm off-gassing the bottles every couple of days. not sure if it will last until end of July, so I have several cartons of flowers frozen in water just in case.
I've also found out we'll have to bring the bottles down to dorset for the wedding - hmm - that'll be exciting the way the OH drives ! 
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