I peeked in the cupboard today and gave the tincture jars a vigorous shaking.  Then I sent them back to sleep.

I’m about half way through the stash of elderberries in the freezer.  Still on my list to try are elderberry syrup and elderberry jam.  I decided to try this recipe for elderberry syrup first, choosing it for its use of honey over sugar.

I played around with proportions and the possibility of adding a splash of lemon juice or vinegar, as in these two recipes.  The following are some variables I considered.

Juicer or sieve: I boiled the berries and pushed through a fine mesh sieve.  The remaining juice, I cooked down with honey and lemon, then poured off half of it to make one jar of light syrup.  The remaining berry corpses I sent through the juicer, and added the seedless product to the other half of light syrup.  This made for a syrup with more body.

Pulp or not: no pulp this round, it went into the compost.  I’ll have to commit to a laborious process of de-stemming if I’m going to try a jam.

Honey or sugar: honey, no question.

How sweet: I went more sweet on the light syrup, a little less sweet on the fuller bodied version.  Both have a slight bitterness, which may be from the trace stems or from sitting overnight in a steel pot.  Both are less sweet than the recipe.  Because I’m a wuss about sugars?

Add acid, lemon or vinegar: Yes to acid.  I used the juice of one lemon in the light syrup and an additional 1/4c of cider vinegar in the second round.

Make it tonic with alcohol: I didn’t try it this time.  Maybe next round, or in the bottling of the syrup as gifts.  Perhaps I’ll try a bit of elderberry tincture as the added alcohol.

Round one is jarred and sealed.  I’ve got roughly 3lbs of frozen berries to de-stem before the next round.