I would agree elderberries are not really tart to me at all. The honey should work well for sweetness. I do like the flower flavor but too much work for me. Speaking of berries I got a quart of strawberries and a half gallon of honeyberries today. Nice the daily harvests have started!!!
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I have, in the past, made an elderberry extractā¦ essentially soaking ripe berries in cheap vodka for a couple of weeks, with a little bit of added sugar. Iāve done the same with blueberries, blackberries, Aronia, for years, and loved itā¦ but the elderberry extractā¦ godawful stuff.
Cooked down, strained, and sweetened with honey, and a little lemon juiceā¦ not bad, though.
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Picked half dozen blueberries and a couple Hinnomaki Red gooseberriesā¦but donāt have any domesticated elderberries. The native ones should be bloomingā¦or soon.
Our wild EB are in bloom now here in TN.
Saw a big patch of them on the side of the road on the way to Church this morn.
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I make a tincture out of them. No sugar at all. Equal parts vodka and berries. Put in a dark place, shake occasionally, and itās ready in a couple months. Strain and store in a dark bottle.
I also put it dropper bottles to give to friends and family. Supposedly, many of the berriesā best compounds are only alcohol soluable. After much experimentation, i find the flavored vodkas make it more palatable. Still, i prefer to take it with herbal tea.
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Missouriās Terry Durham, Has been promoting elder berrys as a value added crop. Creating a industry around them . Lots of info on line about his efforts
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I do a lot of those tinctures with my fruits! I also add simple syrup and club soda or ginger ale depending on the berry. They feel highly effective 
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Elderberry syrup is amazing, as is jam. Havenāt tried the wine yet. I actually like the taste of raw berries OK (only a few at a time - the dose makes the poison). Iāll put in another vote for the flowers, though. AMAZING unique floral flavor for teas, syrups, etc. Also try elderflower fizz. Basically a naturally carbonated soft drink flavored by the flowers and fizzed by the natural yeasts that live on them.
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I transplanted two crowns of wild elderberry into my field back in Januaryā¦ they have grown like a weed, bloomed and setting fruit now.
I plan to dehydrate them and use in elderberry tea. Might add a little lemon balm, hibiscus to the mix.
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They smell good, too, I bet.
Try some in jelly sometime.
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we always made elderberry - crab apple jelly from the wild elderberries until the state went and sprayed the road bank 
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My wife makes elderberry jelly and gummies. This year was a bumper crop of elderberries. I harvest and prep them for her.
A quick tip is the freeze the whole heads overnight then bang the frozen head against the inside of a 5 gallon bucket, the ripe berries fall off easily from the stems while still frozen. The ones that donāt fall off easy arenāt ripe enough anyways, so not worth the effort banging them harder or more inside the bucket. If you try and get ever last one loose from the head that looks ripe the batch will have an off flavor because you got too many unripe ones.
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I personally find elderberries almost completely tasteless rawānot sweet, not sour, not anything. But when I cook them into syrup they tasteā¦medicinal? But the past two years I made big batches of elderberry wine with wild elderberries, and the 2022 wine, which started off really weird and funky, has become really delicious, so I have high hopes for this yearās as well, which I have not yet bottled.
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Are wild elderberry worthwhile growing for fruit?
@Robert - Iāve grown 6-8 named varietiesā¦ long ago lost IDs, so I donāt know which are which, anymore. But IMO, none are better than occasional random wild elderberries Iāve found growing in fencelines/along roadsides. Have run across a couple of clumps of random wild elderberries that have bigger, more tightly/densely-packed heads of berries than any of the named varieties I bought.
Only thing I do with mine, anymore is freeze for use later in making elderberry syrup - boiled, strained, sweetened with honey, a cinnamon stick & lemon for flavor.
I made a vodka elderberry infusion some years back, like Iād done with other berries (blueberry, Aronia, blackberry, strawberry, etc.)ā¦ it was the nastiest thing Iād ever drunk, this side of Nocino.
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For me absolutely not. But thatās because they are everywhere here. Top of my head there are four large bushes on my plot alone and some back roads are just lined with them as far as the eye can see.
Are you just juicing and fermenting or are you adding anything else? I know you have to be very careful with the seeds, leaves, and unripe fruit that can contaminate a batch. I may go get me enough for a gallon and a half batch.
Hereās something that can turn downright mediocre fruit wine into a quite pleasant one; choke cherries from Prunus Virginiana. Most fruits lack the tannins and acidity for a decent mouthfeel in wine but chokecherries have those in abundance. Go try to eat one, youāll see what I mean. For instance wine grapes can have a titratable acidity around .65%. Choke cherries have been clocked at 3.04ā4.03%. You can ferment separately and blend it in to taste; a cup or two of juice per gallon should put a smile in your face.
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i sent moose on here a start of the only wild elder Iāve ever found here in n. Maine and it was growing on the side of a old logging road. he said the named varieties dont survive there but mine did. isnt he up in Fairbanks?
The fragrance of the flowers is unreal
He is in Anchorage. And there is elderberry literally everywhere.
But yes, it is common for named varieties to be a lot less hardy than plants that are more native. Goji berries are the same; I had to hunt down a mutt so it would actually grow here. For others it is a matter of finding the hardier branch of the family tree, so to speak.
Take haskaps. If you tell me of a new variety, my first question is how much Russian is in them. Russian haskaps are a lot more winter tolerant, while Japanese haskaps are more heat tolerant. If a new Haskap doesnāt have enough russian genes in it I would be leery to try it.
And then there are some plants that love to really specialize. Iām planting fringed sage here and there, hoping that it will take. If you take a stick and plant it next to where the mother plant is, chances are it will grow. Take it a few miles out with a slightly different environment, and the failure rate goes waaay up. And Iām not talking problems with acidity, minerals, or type of soil; the plant tends to over adapt to where it is growing.
Elderberries are bland and taste like dirt.
Eating them raw = diarrhea blast
However, they make the best jelly in the world.
Mixed with cider they make delicious wine.
Iām talking sambucus canadensis.
Birds love themā¦
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