Elderberries  Add/Read Comments

beautiful picture andrew - are you going to make wine?
our neighbours used to make god-awful elderberry wine when we were growing up, but maybe I thought all wine was gross at that age.

somebody mentioned elderberry jam. you should make me some, cos I know you aren't busy at all right now, just twiddling your thumbs trying to think of things to keep yourself occupied ;)

So that'll be the gossip machine working overtime then! ;-)

Tiz true have a little time on my hands at the moment and I was wondering what to do with the berries. Just need a recipe...

Elderberries unfortunately don't taste so good alone, you need to mix them with another fruit for jam (or a typically English crumble).
Alternatively you could try Elderberry wine, which I'm busy typing a recipe for!

Usually I pick elderberries at my sister's in W. Virginia....this year there weren't many at her home so we ventured out into a pasture field and found really tall elderberry bushes/trees among blackberry vines, they were drapping down due to the berries hanging in HUGE clumps, the biggest elderberries I have ever seen. On each trunk were thorns going up the trunks in rows going around the trunk, I've never seen elderberries with thorns or even bushes that have grown into tree shapes instead of typical elderberry bushes. My questions, do you know if this is unusual or if this is what happens when the bushes mature? I read in and edible fruit book that the inside pith of elderberry trunks are poisonous, if I have left some stems on with the berries while my wine is fermenting will this create a poison in my wine? I sure don't want to get sick or whoever drinks my wine to become sick or worse yet die from being poisoned. Please, can you help me with this deliema? Thanks, Wanda Shoemaker

Wanda
All the bushes I picked the fruit from had a small number of thorns - thought they all did!

Homemade wine though is out of my sphere but why would you keep twigs in with the juice anyway?