Elderflower syrup…. so good!

Now that we’ve all been blessed with beautiful days of glorious sunshine, many farmers have surely taken advantage of the opportunity to have a good hay harvest. The dry weather is also ideal for harvesting herbs and making juices—including elderberry juice, among others. The elderberry bush is one of my favorites—whether as tea, in baked desserts, as jelly, as an ingredient in jams, or as elderflower juice.

My grandmother from the Maurachgut always took us along when she was harvesting meadow caraway, herbs, and elderflowers, and she shared a simple but delicious recipe with us—it keeps well and is easy to make. I’m happy to pass this recipe along and hope you enjoy making it.

Ingredients: 40–50 large elderflowers (you can use up to 10 more, just the flower clusters), 4 liters of water, 6 kg of fine granulated sugar, 6 organic lemons (well washed), or a mixture of lemons and oranges plus 125 g of citric acid. Harvest the elderflowers on a dry day—ideally around noon; I always pinch them off right after they bloom so there are almost no stems left. So, place the mixture in a 10-liter bucket or other clean container, add 4 liters of water, 6 kg of sugar, the sliced lemons, and the citric acid; stir a few times, and finally add the dried elderflowers. Then stir it thoroughly again. Stir the juice at least once a day for 3–6 days.

If you stir it several times a day and the juice already tastes good, you can bottle the elderberry juice after just three days. Strain it through a sieve and a diaper, then pour it into clean bottles. We squeeze out the cloth diaper at the very end and use this squeezed-out syrup (i.e., the “leftovers”) right away as a drink. The bottled juice keeps very well for a year or longer. We store them in the basement, making sure the caps are tightly sealed. If you like, you can also briefly boil the elderflower juice and add a little preservative; however, the juice keeps very well even if it’s prepared cold and everything is done according to the instructions above. You’ll get about 7 liters of elderflower syrup from the amount listed above. Best of luck from Katharina, the farmer’s wife at Zittrauerhof.