A couple of weeks ago I mangled a recipe for Elderflower “Champagne”.
It sat in its bucket for two weeks, smelling a bit odd, getting a smidge mouldy-looking, and eventually a bit bubbly. I found a site that said a bit of mould wasn’t dire, so I scooped it off when I saw it, and stirred the mix every so often.
Today, I filtered and decanted into bottles.
I was looking round for a gardening blog to read, and happened across Two Thirsty Gardeners, which sounded right up my street.
I meandered round their site for a bit, before coming across an old post on Elderflower Sparkle. This reminded me that I had missed elderflower season the last few years, and I resolved to head out into the field behind my house the next morning to check on progress.
One of my grandmothers was of French descent, and aside from her charming accent and excellent cooking skills, it meant that she was also partial to some items with which as a British child, I was unfamiliar.
Quite often at Christmas someone would give her an immense box which when opened, turned out to contain 5 or 6 marrons glacés, widely spaced and individually wrapped.
Two posts about home-flavoured vodkas in a row may cause you to worry about my alcohol intake, but there’s no need. I’m not actually very fond of alcohol, but it is fun to play with.
In years gone by I used to make sickly experimental vodkas by chopping up chocolate bars, pushing them into a vodka bottle, sealing the whole thing back up and putting it through a dishwasher cycle. They turned out surprisingly well, but you need a confident stomach to drink more than a shot or two.
Way back in sunny July I wrote a post about gooseberries.
Towards the end of the post I mentioned some experimental gooseberry vodka I was making, and promised to update you with the results.
Well…ta-da!
