Alcohol Free Elderflower Champagne Recipe
There’s a lovely self set elderflower in my back garden which is covered in white flower heads and it would be a shame not to use them for some kind of brew. I’d already planned to make some alcoholic elderflower Champagne with some of them, but with a pregnant wife I thought I’d have a go at a non alcoholic version too so she has something to drink.
Elderflower champagne very much reminds me of my childhood; being poured an ice cold glass of fizzy, sweet champagne by my nan and us kids gulping it down asking for more. Luckily my Grandad made vast quantities of it every year for us to enjoy (well the ones that didn’t explode anyway) and it’s his non alcoholic elderflower champagne recipe that I’m going to try out and see if it is as good as I remember. On to the recipe:
Non Alcoholic Elderflower Champagne
2 heads of Elderflower – remove the flowers from the green stalks
1 1/2 pounds (680g) White Sugar
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 gallon (4.55 Litres) cold water
1 lemon (juiced and rind cut up)
- Place flower heads in a bowl followed by the juice and rind of the lemon
- Add the sugar and vinegar and then pour the water over
- Stir to mix
- Leave for 24 hours and then bottle
Equipment you may need
- Fermentation Bucket – Around £10
- Syphon – Makes transferring to bottles easy
- Star San – A great no rinse steriliser that’s easy to use and lasts ages
- Bottles – loads of options for swing top bottles, make sure they are strong
Make sure you bottle these in either plastic soft drink bottles or glass bottles that can take some pressure, pop bottles (cola, fizzy water etc) and beer bottles should be fine. The natural yeast in the flower heads should turn some of the sugar into CO2 giving you a nice fizz. After a couple of weeks in a warm place your non alcoholic elderflower champagne should be ready to drink, just put in the fridge and enjoy on a sunny afternoon or evening in the garden.
Hi I’ve made this recipe many times, do you know if you can make with any other flower or blossom?
thank you for your help
Patti
Hi Patti
I’ve only ever made it with elderflower but i’d assume you could do similar with other blossoms or flowers. I’d guess you’d need them to be quite strong tasting like elderflower or it won’t have much taste.
I’ve just had a quick scan through Andy Hamilton’s Booze for Free, he has a recipe using a mix of gorse, dandelion, white dead nettle and red clover flowers. There’s also an autumn flower one that uses balsam flowers and clover flowers. Both these recipes are for alcoholic versions but you could use the same method above of bottling after only 1 day and using the natural yeast to make CO2 rather than alcohol.
There’s also a recipe for dandelion champagne that is very similar to my one above for elderflower, though the dandelion season is mainly early spring.
I’d be interested to hear if you try any other flowers and how they turn out.
Can I use less sugar as I have just made one lot and it is far too sweet for me. thank you
Hi, yes you can use less sugar if you like. Adjust it to your taste. Alternatively you could up the lemon juice a little to counteract the sweetness. Thanks
I’ve gone down to 300g of sugar to 5l of water and it worked fine and made a great mixer.
Is it possible to use a sugar alternative like yacon syrup or monkfruit? Or does that screw with the fermentation process?
I think you could replace some of the sugar with an alternative, then just have some for the yeast to eat up and produce CO2. If i was making a well carbonated beer of this volume I’d add about 50g of sugar to prime it, so maybe you’d want a bit more to get the yeast going and give it some to work with, then get the sweetness you want with sweetener. Since it’s quick and easy to make it’s probably worth experimenting with a few different batches, See what volumes work for you. But to get the fizz you will need some sugar, or use a soda stream to carbonate it.