A delicate, but juicy experiment in progress.

SwampDonkey · July 04, 2010, 01:21:30 PM

This is kind of like one of them experiments like Jeff's mountain ash berry jam. ;D

Hopefully, I know what I'm doing...........stay tuned. ;)

SwampDonkey · July 04, 2010, 01:58:27 PM

Condensing the juice, 2 cups sugar added in the quart sauce pan. Experiment with less sugar, because I don't think you need any more than half that in a quart, truthfully.

SwampDonkey · July 04, 2010, 01:58:51 PM

And a spice bag prepared with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and all spice (I didn't have the all spice). ;)

Toss it into the "soup" with a string for retrieval. But, a spoon can fish it out to. Boil 15-20 minutes with the spice bag. ;D

SwampDonkey · July 04, 2010, 02:33:12 PM

This is the surplus from the experiment. ;D

Red-Berried Elder Shrub (less the alcohol). ;)

Sambucus racemosa

Yup, they are ripe here after flowering in April this year. ;D

SwampDonkey · July 04, 2010, 03:53:03 PM

Signed and sealed. ;D :D

Tom · July 04, 2010, 04:14:29 PM

That looks like a "Ka-boom" in progress. :D

SwampDonkey · July 04, 2010, 05:11:38 PM

I hope not Tom. ;) Mighty tasty when on the stove. I boiled the life out of the jar and cover in a big pot and poured the boiling juice into the hot bottle, followed by a dipper of boiling water poured over it after closing the lid. The lid sealed down, so fingers crossed. Now I want to make more. :D :D :D There are lbs and lbs of berries just hanging, it takes a while back home sitting in your comfort chair to thumb-rub off the ripe berries. ;D

Gonna be mighty tasty this winter. ;)

SwampDonkey · July 10, 2010, 09:08:39 AM

Working on another batch of elder berry juice. ;D

They go yellow orange when boiling the juice out. This time will have enough for another sealed jar and one jar for now.

SwampDonkey · July 10, 2010, 02:02:23 PM

:

No Go! to the red-berried elder juice. :

Bad after taste, yuck!

scgargoyle · July 11, 2010, 01:03:46 PM

It's a little late, but I thought red elderberries were somewhat poisonous? I've got a line on some wild black ones here, and I might make a little elderberry wine. We'll see if my 'berry man' comes through.....

Dan_Shade · July 11, 2010, 01:45:03 PM

http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_sanic4.pdf

this link says that you should only eat purple and blue elderberries:

Quote
Ethnobotanic: Only the blue or purple berries of elderberry are edible. Edible berries and flower are used for medicine, dyes for basketry, arrow shafts, flute, whistles, clapper sticks, and folk medicine. The active alkaloids in elderberry plants are hydrocyanic acid and sambucine. Both alkaloids will cause nausea so care should be observed with this plant. Elderberries are high in Vitamin C. The red berries of other species are toxic and should not be gathered.

metalspinner · July 11, 2010, 01:49:56 PM

QuoteBad after taste, yuck!

"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries." :D

French taunting from Monty Python

Gary_C · July 11, 2010, 02:52:38 PM

He's not answering!

Suppose he's alright?

Jeff · July 11, 2010, 06:04:43 PM

Hey, don't be using this as an excuse for backing out on coming to the pigroast. Yer coming whether this killed you or not!

At least Dogberry was considered edible before I tried it. ;)

Fruit not palatable to humans and may be slightly poisonous, although it is harmless when cooked. Sambucus racemosa ssp. pubens contains a cyanogenetic glycoside and an alkaloid that can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and gastrointestinal pain. The berries contain very little of these substances, the stems contain moderate amounts, and the roots contain enough to cause death to hogs. Medical uses have been made of all parts.

Gary_C · July 12, 2010, 11:08:25 AM

What if he's not quite dead but still puking? :

:

:D :D

Jeff · July 12, 2010, 05:01:18 PM

Hes got three weeks to stabilize one way or the other.

SwampDonkey · July 12, 2010, 05:18:11 PM

They never effected me in the slightest actually. But, I only had small tastes. You can eat the cooked berries as far as I found out about them, but they have to be pitted. But they don't taste good enough to be bothered, so we won't go there again. You aren't suppose to eat any of them raw of any kind and some folks in California crushed berries, leaves and sticks to make the juice and never cooked it. They got sick, the most serious case of the bunch got real sick, according to a poison control centre the report I read. He drank the most, 6 glasses. Natives on the west coast made cakes from the S. canadensis variety, which grows up like a small tree. I kept all leaves and sticks from my berries, like the natives did. They took the stems and all back to camp to clean into cedar boxes. My shrub leaflets from college, say inedible to raw S. racemosa var. pubens. We now have our common elder, like Jeff's up his way, just beginning to flower now. They are not all that common as the other one.

I've got to find my Weeds of the Woods by NB Dept of Nat. Res. (1984). There is some good information in there on shrub berries and various folk uses. Apparently the plant doesn't affect deer and moose raw. I think I read in my leaflets that 20 odd species of local birds eat the berries.

Anyway, we'll just close this chapter of the recipe book. ;D

I can bring some roots for Tom's hogs. :D

SwampDonkey · July 22, 2011, 12:06:55 PM

Well it's 2011 and it's raspberry season again in NB. ;D

It's time to experiment again. This time a red raspberry shrub is in the making. 11 boxes of berries from the garden has yielded a couple gallons of juice. About 6 cups of water was added to get the juice extracted. Used cheese cloth to strain off the pulp and seeds, clothes pinned to my boiler. After all the juice was collected, 1 cup of boiled fresh bee-balm tea from the leaves was made and added, 3 cups of sugar, and a spice bag of cin, nutmeg, and cloves of 2 teaspoons each spice. Also a teaspoon of lemon extract is added. Boiling it down now with all the ingredients added to take some water off that was added.