Yesterday I gathered more elderberries.
See all those stems in there? In the picture, it looks like it would be so easy to pick those out. It is NOT! I love having elderberries but I so dread cleaning them. That pile is about 9 pounds, including the stems. I divided it up into three grocery sacks, found room in a freezer for them and left them overnight.
My plan for today is to put them in a big bowl, in small portions, go outside and shake the heck out of that bowl. In theory, the berries stay on the bottom and all the twigs end up on top so I can then come back inside where it’s cool, and pick out the stems. Then I’ll add water to the bowl and more of the stems/debris will float to the top and I can skim that off. Then I’ll juice the berries and strain the juice so I should end up with nice, clean juice.
From there, I’m not sure what I will do. My preference is to make enough syrup for us to consume over the next month, freeze the extra juice, take it out as needed and make syrup but there is not one square inch of space in a freezer. I don’t want to can the juice because I feel like canning it takes away some of the good properties.
I don’t want to do it but maybe I’ll take enough tomatoes out of the freezer, cook those down for sauce and I can put elderberry juice in place of the tomatoes in the freezer.
Vince told me already that we need to go out and cut more elderberries. Note to Self: Make sure there’s some amount of space in the freezers next summer BEFORE the elderberries need harvesting.
Amy says
My dad used to make elderberry wine. I was tasked with taking the berries off by running them thru my hands. Learned quickly to wear gloves while doing so.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Yes, aren’t they such a pain to clean?
Donnalyn says
Judy, I am curious. Could you freeze dry the berries and pulverize them and then make your syrup?
Lynn Damewood says
I was wondering something similar, could you make the juice or syrup then dehydrate it?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I don’t do a lot of dehydrating so I’m not sure. I would guess, if it’s possible to dehydrate other juices, you could do it with the elderberry.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I do freeze dry all the extra berries but I do not pulverize them. I simply dump them in water, let them rehydrate, then make juice with them as I would fresh berries. We only drink the syrup through cold and flu season so I don’t mind keeping the ones I’ll use this year in the freezer. I can steam juice them from frozen but don’t do it from the freeze dried ones.
Tracy says
I was looking for a way to harvest dried lavender florets and came up with using a fork to comb through them. Apparently some people use a wide comb to remove elderberries from the stems too. https://greatescapefarms.com/how-to-harvest-elderberry-sambucus-canadensis/ Maybe?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
The comb works well for blueberries too but I found it made a bigger mess with elderberries. They’re so fragile and burst so easily that just a little sticky added to the mix and it was way more time consuming. The best way I’ve found to clean them is to freeze them, put them in a big bowl with a lid and shaking it mostly causes them to separate from the stemms and twigs. It’s a big time drain but so worth it.