Elderflower Liqueur

Summer is almost halfway through and I just came home from Germany and Poland with a few litres of cheap vodka just for the reason of making liqueurs.
And just in time too!! The Elderflowers are almost all gone now so first thing I do when done unpacking is going out in the garden outside my apartement and cutting myself a few flowers to start with.

I got the inspiration from Elderflower Champagne (which I tried to make and failed miserably oh well, new batch in the making for this year too).

Step 1 Ingredients

I wanted to keep this simple and basic.

So what you need?

4 dl of water
6 dl of sugar
7-8 fresh elderflowers
4 dl of vodka

You can also take the zest from a small lemon if you want a little less sweetness.

a little side note:
Since the flowers are almost all blossomed I took a few extra into flowers and added just to make sure I get the taste right. In the end I had 9 or 10 flowers all together

Comments

[nuke3ae]

Is this basically an instructable to make St. Germaine (an elderflower liquor)? If so I am very excited.

[Osquar]

Yeah it is, although I didn't know about that liqueur until I had a bartender friend of mine taste it. St. Germaine is much less thick than mine is, but you can solve that by adding a mix of water and vodka till you get the desired runnines. I used a 50-50 ratio.

[Osquar]

I've finally gotten around to compare my liqueur to St. Germain's and my conclusion is that St. Germain's has a much sharper taste of alcohol than mine, might be because it's much stronger, but I prefere my own.
Next is to try out some cocktails and see the difference there.

[myrrhmaid]

Elderblossom tea mixes very nice with peppermint & is a natural anti-viral. It works well in flu season. Thanks for the nice recipe. I look forward to trying it. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be in everyone's medicine cabinet!

[AndyGadget]

 
Just a tip : When you're picking the elderflowers, smell them first.  Most bushes produce the flowers which have that wonderful sweet summery smell, but a few smell of cat pee which will taint the drink.