Many people seem to know that elderberry syrup is good for you: It’s been clinically proven to help your immune system, and, well, it tastes nice. So how do you make elderberry syrup at home?
You need elderberries. Where I live in Northern California, they start coming ripe at the end of May, and depending on what state or province you live in you can find them somewhere all the way into November.
Making elderberry syrup is always the first thing I do with elderberries once they come ripe. Why? Because it’s so versatile. Uses for elderberry syrup include as a homemade soda base, a mixer for cocktails, an immune system booster, a base for elderberry ice cream, as a garnish for other ice creams, or as a glaze for poultry. Elderberry syrup is also great in a classic Cumberland sauce.
Making your syrup seems pretty intuitive. I mean, all you need are elderberries and sugar, right?
Well, yes. But my method for making the syrup is different from most others. Other recipes ask that you cook your elderberries, mash them with a potato masher and let them drain through a jelly bag. There is a problem with this.
You will never break all the berries with this method, and, given that it is a time-consuming and persnickety business to take all those elderberries off their stems — the stems are mildly toxic, by the way — you really want as much juice as you can get.
A better way is to use an immersion blender and a food mill to make short work of our little blue friends.
Works so well you can get twice as much yield from your elderberries. Twice, you say? Yes, twice. Most elderberry syrup recipes require you to add water to your boiling berries. I suppose that works fine, but with my method you don’t have to water down your berries to make a sufficient amount of syrup — unless you are in a serious drought.
Do it this way and you will get 3+ pints of elderberry syrup from 3 pounds of elderberries, as opposed to 2 pints from 2 pounds of elderberries with another 2 to 4 cups of water thrown in. Believe me, this is a huge flavor difference.
When they are on their stems, it is roughly equivalent to half a paper grocery bag. On a good year, that can take you all of 10 minutes to harvest. Destemming, however, will take an hour — if you are good at it.
Why make elderberry syrup? Aside from ice cream, wild game sauces, etc, you can use elderberry syrup:
- As a sorbet base
- In an Italian fruit mustard, a/k/a mostarda
- As a flavoring for panna cotta or creme caramel
- In a martini
- As flavor for an Italian soda
- On your pancakes
The possibilities are pretty endless. And since elderberries grow in most of the 50 states, as well as in Canada and most of Europe, there’s no reason you can’t go outside and get some yourself.
Elderberry Syrup
Ingredients
- 3 pounds elderberries destemmed
- 4 cups sugar
Instructions
- You will need to remove the berries from the stems; elderberry stems are toxic. (I go through some tricks on destemming elderberries here.) It should take you about 45 minutes to an hour to destem 3 pounds of elderberries, which equates to about a half a normal paper grocery bag.
- At this point you can empty your berries into a large bowl of ice water. Weird debris will float, like dead flower husks, bugs, etc. Pour this off.
- Pour the elderberries into a large pot and either mash them thoroughly with a potato masher, or, better yet, with an immersion blender. Only break up the berries for a few seconds using the immersion blender, and use it on low setting. You don't want to grind up the seeds, which are bitter.
- Bring the elderberries to a boil, stirring often. Now, if you are using a food mill, set it up with its finest plate and pour the elderberries into it. Run the food mill until the mash is pretty dry, then squeeze out any remaining elderberry juice. You should have a little more than 1 quart. Pour the juice through your finest mesh sieve to catch any stray seeds or pulp.
- If you are using the jelly bag method, mash the berries again after they've boiled, then pour them into a jelly bag suspended over a large bowl. Let this drain for 1 to 2 hours. You should have a little less than 1 quart. You don't need to strain the juice the way you do with the food mill method.
- Return the juice to the (cleaned) pot and add an equal volume of sugar, normally about 4 cups. Bring to a boil until it froths, skim the froth, then turn off the heat and pour into clean jars. Always use a new canning lid when you are making this syrup, unless you plan on eating it in the next few weeks. Seal the jars and let stand until the lids pop. They will keep for a year on the shelf or in the fridge.
Hi, if you don’t do a water bath with them, do you put any lemon juice in them to keep them on the shelf and not in the refrigerator
Vickie: You don’t need to for preservation, but I do add lemon or fruit fresh for flavor. The fact that you mix elderberry juice + lemon juice with an equal amount of sugar make this shelf stable. If you use less sugar, it will not be stable.
If I reduce the amount of sugar (1/4″ cup sugar for 1 cup juice), and then use the water bath canning method to preserve the juice, will they still be shelf stable?
Lauren: I have no idea. Maybe not, unless you acidify them with citric acid. But you can reduce the sugar and keep the jar in the fridge, where it will last for several months.
Great recipe and super simple. Elderberries grow by the truck load up and down the dirt roads were we live in northeastern Washington. To about a gallon of elderberries, I added the last of the black currants from the garden, and a quart of frozen huckleberries from last year. I also used a Mehu-Liisa steam juicer (got it a yard sale years ago and it’s one of my favorite food preservation tools). Yummers! (Oh, and I’ve canned jam for nearly 40 years and never put it in a canner – we just do what you do here. Easy.)
So, no water bath..just sealing in hot jars? Same goes for high altitude?
Sarah: If the syrup is 1:1 sugar to juice, no need to water bath. If it is less, you need to or it will ferment.
How would you recommend making with dried elderberries?
Elizabeth: I would make the syrup of water and sugar, then steep the dried berries in the hot syrup over night.
Love the idea of freezing then first, then shaking the berries of. I will certainly try this with my harvest.
I love your approach, thank you for sharing your invaluable hands on experience. I started making syrup from this recipe four years ago, and since then syrup making in elderberry season has become a family tradition. I hope you don’t mind I reference you as a source in my recent post about it.
I have another trick for you. Shove the bag of elderberry stems into the freezer. When the little berries are frozen hard I just whack the stems against the side of a bowl and they come off the stem right away. So instead of picking little berries off the stems for 45 minutes, you can get it all done in about 10 minutes.
Do you think it would work to pick the berries but freeze them for making syrup later? I need to teach a small group of people how to make the syrup but the class is scheduled for August when berries may not be available–or they might be given how variable elderberry fruiting can be!
Alex: Yep, I’ve done that many times.
Once again you have taught me a new trick, Hank! I highly recommend the immersion blender technique, it worked great. (tho I did add water, I found them tricky to blend without it.) Such good stuff!
Are you substituting elderberry syrup in place of red currant jelly in your Cumberland sauce?
Debbie: Sometimes.
I like the recipe you present. I’ve been substituting the sugar 1 part for honey 3/4 part. Honey is sweeter than sugar So for the above recipe using 3lbs of berries I use 3 cups of honey rather than 4 cups of sugar. Delish!
Hi there! I’m a chef, but not too familiar with game meat. I currently have 15 lbs of stew venison in my freezer, leftover from a themed historical pop-up dinner I had months ago now. I was wondering, if I braised (with added fats) and then shredded the venison, do you think it would work in summer rolls with fresh spring veg— and maybe with a elderberry syrup dipping sauce? I’m not familiar enough with the taste and texture of venison to know whether this is actually as good an idea that I feel it might be… though it’s promising that googling “venison” and “elderberry” led me to this page. Also, if you think braising is the way to go, what fat do you suggest I add? Thanks so much for any ideas you may have!!
I saw Scott Rea or The Scott Rea Project on YouTube use a fork to comb the elderberries off the stems for one of his pigeon recipies. Just putting that out there
Before coming across this, I already put my elderberries (stems and all) into a steam juicer (like those used for grape juice). I made jelly with the juice, and now wanted to make syrup. How “toxic” are the stems and where did you get that information? Should I throw it all out?!
Ok…it is my first try at making elderberry juice to use in other things. I cooked the berries and then put them in a jelly bag and squeezed the juice out into a bowl. After I was done, i had some green slime on my hands, all over the jelly bag, and in the bowl I discarded the strained berries into. My right hand slightly burns as well, sort of like when you deal with hot peppers but not as bad. Then when I poured the juice into a storage container to put into fridge, it bubbled just a little and made a fizzy sound, then stopped (it lasted about 2 seconds). The berries were only stored in fridge for a couple of days before I processed. Is it possible to overcook the berries? Should I throw out all of my juice? Is any of this normal? Is there anything I should have done different??
Crystal: You’re fine. The green slime is a part of working with elderberries, alas.
I got a bag of dried elderberries and want to make jelly anyone have a recipe??
Simply recipes has a recipe that I was going to try out. This is my first time making elderberry jelly. Mom used to send us 5 kids out to pick on the roadside 40 years ago (those bushes still stand today). Mom made awesome jellies but elderberry was my favorite so I’m trying it this year.
I have a neat trick! I freeze a lot of fruit with my vacuum sealer into bags labeling the lbs and cups of each bag. This allows the cell walls to break down and gives me the luxury of dealing with the fruit in winter months. I thaw out the bags and then place them on a towel while running a rolling pin over the bag to mash all the fruit. Back and forth, side to side over and over. This is super efficient, quick, and I can see the fruits of my labor in the clear bag. The less air you seal in your bag the better, so the air pockets don’t get in the way. I never have to worry about mashing fruit again!
I’ve been making syrup for a couple of years now but a strange thing happened this year. My syrup turned into a weird mixture of syrup and little blobs of jelly – can’t find a mention of this anywhere. Tastes fine though.
Hi Can you tell me why the elderberry syrup fizzes up and spills out bottle neck on opening causing me to lose lots,I have made it for years an always sterilize the bottles,is there anything I can do to prevent this,I have searched internet an no one seems to mention this happening,
Ruth: Never happened to me. My guess is you are doing the primary fermentation in a bottle, not a bucket. I don’t move the juice to the carboy bottles until it has calmed down, about a week.
Almost harvest season. Not sure about your method of mashing berries, you’ll get more juice but it will be cloudy and bitter. At least that’s what happens with cooked berries and squeezing the bag.
Lewis: It is neither. I’ve done this method every year for more than a decade. Look at the picture. Clear, see?
I am so amazed by elderberries’ importance and potential that I’m going way past foraging them; I’ve grown 100 bushes to maturity and I’m planting even more! Here is one method of de-stemming that I like:
You just get a couple of clean, empty totes or even just buckets and cover them with little precut rectangles of 1/2″ hardware cloth. Sit out in a shady spot and just drag each bunch of berries across it a few times– best while sipping elder flower cordial with a friend!! Pressing lightly from above with your other hand speeds the process. (First strip away any unripe (green) berries from the center of the bunch. Some stems do get through this way, but they are often loose and come out in the rinsing step.
I cooked my elderberries down to juice, made some jelly and froze the rest of my juice. I would love to find an elderberry balsamic vinegar recipe I could make with my remaining juice, any suggestions?
I want to know if the Blue Elderberry can be used as a syrup for flu & cold remedy.. They say you should use black elderberry (sambucus nigra)for this syrup for flu & cold. So can blue elderberries be used??? Do different varieties have a different effect?? Or does each variety have their own qualities??
It’s the same elderberry. Both are S. nigra in current taxonomy. The blue elder, S. mexicana, is an older term. They both work fine. Just no red elderberries…
Hello! I grew York and Nova variety elderberries outside of Chicago and after a few seasons got a huge crop this year. I got them ready and started cooking them, but the flavor of the juice was like cut grass. Do I have the wrong varieties? I don’t think the American elderberry is the Nigra species like European, but it is more winter hearty. Could the flavor be that off? I let some even ripen more, but the flavor was still unpleasant. I also don’t get the “bloom” on the berries with these bushes. I was hoping to make syrup, but no berry flavor here. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
I know nothing about cultivated varieties, sorry! And the bloom typically only forms on the Western elderberry.
I live in Hampshire England. Just been out picking these plump juicy berries and am sitting in our garden getting the berries off the stems with a fork. Works well. But best to wear gloves to avoid purple fingers. Will go indoors soon to boil them with sugar and a tiny bit of water. Mash them with a spoon or any other kitchen tool. Pour this into cleaned jars. Mine becomes like a jam/syrup and is used for topping on toast, crumpets, cereal, icecream or a spoonful in Champagne or white wine and soda water. Delish! The jars are good in the fridge for a few weeks. Keeping some berries in the freezer so I can make regular fresh batches over the winter. Forgot to say this is lovely to flavour Vodka as well. Drink sensibly and enjoy these amazing berries. ???? Karin
Elderberries in Southern Ohio smell similar to blueberries to me. They grow in the waterway behind our country home. We have planted some in our back yard near the waterway which has lots of moisture. I don’t have any problem pulling them off the stems although it is a pain but the TV is a distraction. Using a clean plastic tub works well. I find elderberry syrup enhances a blueberry pie! Overall the work involved in picking, cleaning and cooking elderberries is worth it all! Harriet
I wash them on the stem then comb them off with a pik. Remember the comb that was used to style Afros? It works quick and easy.
This compromise worked well: I started with about 6 cups of berries, was forced to use the old potato masher, boiled and strained to get 2 cups of juice. Added two cups of sugar, boiled, produced 2 cups of delicious syrup.
My berries are already off their stems (frozen each day of back yard picking). Hard to judge from the photo – can you estimate how many CUPS of berries go with the 4 cups of sugar?
Sorry, I don’t know. I go by weight. If you have a kitchen scale, just weigh your berries frozen.
I make elderberry syrup with 1/4 part honey and echinachea as an immune booster for the winter. Simply store in the fridge in a bell *canning)jar and take one delicious tablespoon per day.
Thanks for your help. Not quite sure where I’d pick my own, but I may scrap these berries and go with store bought Sambucol.
Debbie: No idea. Elderberries grow all over the country, so my advice is to wait until next year and pick your own. Sorry.
Where are some places to order in America? I thought I was saving myself some money by making my own, but it’s become a headache. Thank you.
Well, those are dried berries from Bulgaria. The European elderberry is different from the ones we have here in America. That’s my best guess as to why your syrup smells odd.
I haven’t come across ordering fresh berries and since I never smelled a fresh/dried one before, I have nothing to go on. All I can say is that this does not taste like Sambucol from the store.
I ordered them from Starwest Botanicals online. These to be exact. http://www.starwest-botanicals.com/product/1-elder-berries-whole.html
Debbie: Where on earth are you getting elderberries now? I don’t do this syrup with dried berries, so maybe that’s it? And there are different varieties of elderberry, too.
I made my first homemade syrup today and since I have nothing to compare the smell and taste to, what should I expect? When I first simmered the berries in the water on the stove, my daughter asked, “what smells like cheese?”! Should I be worried? I have only tried the store version called Sambucol, and that does not taste like this one. If you could help with any info that would be great. Thank you.
Over ripe berries will have a smell. If you leave them in a plastic grocery bag for tool long, they will break down and begin to smell. Basically rotten berries stink. One thing I have to watch out for here in NE FL is stink bugs. They love to hang around elderberry plants because they eat other harmful bugs. Too often end up in the bag. Keeping your berries in the freezer or fridge before destemming will keep the bugs from crawling out for a visit.
elderberry syrup is also an excellent medicine – high in vit c and boosts the immune system. you can buy it (ha!) for about £10 per 250ml “Sambucol” or make it yourself..for about 20p per bottle. FUnnily enough, I’ve done the later….
Kenna: Aha! You must live in the East or Europe. The elderberries there do have an odor to them, that not everyone loves. Out here in the West, our elderberries smell like ripe grapes. Bottom line, they’re OK. No need to toss them.
My elderberry efforts were messy. Hands still stained. Should have read your instructions first about freezing. My problem is that the elderberry juice has an odor. Didn’t remember any odor. They were kept chilled, but “stink”. OK, or do I need to throw out?
About de-stemming elderberries – I put the fully loaded stalks of berries on cookie trays and place them in the freezer for a few hours. When the berries are solid, a stalk can be gently stripped in a few seconds, leaving behind all the tiny stems. The frozen berries never get squished between my fingers, and the work goes extremely quickly. I take a maximum of 8 berry stalks out of the freezer at once, as they soften very quickly. Believe me – it is absolutely worth a few trips to the freezer to be able to work with the frozen berries. After they thaw, they are too soft to pull off the stems.
I have a steam juicer and it works amazing. I have been doing this forever. My parents would do this with a steam juicer as I was growing up so I learned from them. It extracts 100% of the juice and you don’t have to take the berries off the stem. You put everything into the top part and the steam dose the rest. Before you know it you will have juice flowing out of the tube and into your pot. I have found this to be the best method for whatever I am juicing for jellies and syrups.
I got an old “juicy fruit no. 1 press” this year off from craigslist for making cider. I have so many elderberries around that I thought of pressing them so I threw a bunch in my 3-gallon press and got about a quart-jar’s worth of juice.
In your recipe for the syrup you started by cooking them then straining them. Do you think I can use this “juice” for making the syrup? Do you think if I just bring it to a boil and cook it down for awhile that I can pick up your recipe at point 5. or 6.? Any recommendations or thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks for the recipe! I tried to make elderberry syrup without enough water and ended up having to blend it into a pulp and freeze it. It’s still yummy, but I will to this next time :).
Bob: I have eaten raw elderberries, seeds and all, for many years with no ill effects. While it is true that some people get an upset stomach from eating raw ripe berries, it is equally possible that your problem was from some other food.
Don’t eat the seeds raw! They will make you sick. I did that last year with a handful on some vanilla ice cream and had the runs for a few hours and a very upset stomach for about 12-hrs. I had read an article that said you could eat them raw (skin and pulp) and didn’t see later where they said , “but not the seeds”. That was a big mistake!
Like your site – here in the UK been making elderberry syrup for years, I agree with Marketa, the stems are not toxic if cooked in the small amounts that you leave on. I take off as much stem as I can but cook the berries on the fine stems if necessary. Its the raw berries that are mildly toxic and can cause stomach upsets in adults.
We also use blender, and then strain the mix through a sieve. We freeze the berries first and then they come off the stems lickedy split. I do need a slightly finer sieve to get the smallest seeds; until I get it I have to run it through a jelly bag.
Ash: Absolutely. Two things: First, this is a cooked syrup. Any cyanide in the seeds — which isn’t much with blue elder — is rendered harmless by cooking. Second, if you read the recipe closely, you will see I use an immersion blender, not a regular blender, and certainly not a Vitamix. There is no way an immersion blender is going to break elderberry seeds.
Um, are you sure you want to blend them? I know someone who gave himself cyanide poisoning by throwing frozen elderberries into a vitamix. Since we don’t know if they were cooked or frozen previously it’s been a practice to avoid excessively mashing the seeds.
I make elderberry jam, not syrup, using 50% sugar and pectin. I find that a bit of lemon juice improves the taste. With whole berries I think it tastes best if the elderberries are less than half of the fruit, the rest being whatever I have available: strawberries, black currants, bird cherries, or cranberries. With filtered juice, the pure elderberry jam is good, but I still like to add a bit of lemon. Thanks for the ideas about frozen destemming and pre-blending the berries.
I can not believe I haven’t found you before now! great site! Caveman hubby just came home with about 2 gallons of elderberries and even cleaned them all! So I was like….”What do I do with elderberries???” I’m going to make this syrup and pork loin and elderberry chutney and… sky’s the limit. Thanks for the recipe!
I made this syrup and it turned out great! I have been able to make two batches of elderberry jelly and 7 jars of syrup all from one bounteous elderberry bush we found while out 4 wheeling.
I could NOT find my food mill, so i used a coffee press for the half batch i cooked up this morning.
Thank you so much for the recipe and tips! Here in northern CA, I planted three bushes a few years ago, and am now reaping the rewards. Frozen berry destemming works great, too! The berries hold up w/o losing much juice.
Oh yeah, elderberry syrup (w/ some sweetener) with champagne makes a great kir royale. Just saying, for all the food snobs out there.
I have made elderberry syrup for years. The branches are not toxic!! I cut the branches just above the berries. Rinse, put all in the juicer..Add sugar to the juice, slow boil for an hour. pour into pint jars and seal. I can’t keep it. The whole family loves it.
well if you get a fruit steamer you don’t have to worry about de-stemming the fruit.
Beautiful and well managed WordPress blog. Thank you for the interesting Elderberry Sirup recipe. Just recently my wife and I were learning a lot about the great health benefits of the elderberry, and started to make some research. We were looking for one for a while, but this is the one we like the best. I’ve been growing and selling Elderberry plants for a long time in my Nursery, but I never had the time to look deeper to it’s nutritional and health properties that this amazing plant has. But now we know.
Thanks once again for making it available.
Mike
Thanks for the elderberry recipes on this site, and usage suggestions. I just picked a ton of the berries a few days ago (two 13-gallon garbage bags each about 1/3 third full of berry bunches). This is my second year of dealing with elderberries. The easiest way I found to de-stem them last year is to throw the bags of berries into the deep freeze for a day or so. When I am ready to deal with them I take out a big bunch of them, put them into another plastic bag, and smack them against a table top or the kitchen counter top. Most of the berries fall off the stems into the bag. Then I dump them onto a jelly-roll pan and it is easy to scoop off piles of berries while leaving little and big twigs behind. I put the cleaned berries in another bag and into the freezer while I work on the rest of the remaining frozen berry bunches. It still takes time, but this way is not as fussy as trying to pick all the little stems off the berries when fresh. (I tried using a fork as many have recommended but got impatient.) After finishing the whole batch, I weighed out 3 pounds and put them into a large stockpot to simmer out the juices and followed a recipe for jelly. I will try the immersion blender technique/food mill this year. Thanks for the tip.
I really like your post on Elderberry Syrup. I just finished making 5 quarts of syrup from another recipe and I can see it’s real runny. I still have some in my freezer so will try your recipe with those. I also steam juice and recently put up 60 quarts. It has taken me 2 wks to get to this point. Last yr. I just gently pulled the berries off the stems but this yr. I took cookie sheets and large ss bowls and filled with berries then put in freezer for at least 4 hrs. Large bowls take over night. Rub between hands or with fingers and they fall right off. I have a fetish for elderberries and is hard for me to pass up any but I think I’m at my limit. All total, with my husbands help, we picked (6) 5 gal. buckets full. I also dried some in my solar dryer and they are really sweet. I’m anxious to try your recipe.
Alex: Sorry for the late reply, but yeah, they would have been good in early September. Now you will need to head into the high Sierra to get them. Look about 4-6000 feet right now.
Korri: Well, I have not idea. But I imagine if you follow your jelly recipe and then skip the pectin, you will be fine. Let me know how it turns out!
We have an elderberry tree in our front yard, just discovered last year. We used a steamer/juicer and made elderberry jelly. It’s wonderful. I would like to try your syrup recipe. I love using the steamer/juicer rather than going through the process of cooking, mashing, putting them through a food mill. Would I use the same ratio of juice to sugar that you have in your recipe if I did it this way? Thank you.
My 11 year old kid’s teacher has asked me to come up with edible wild foods for the 5th graders at various seasons this year. I am thinking of making elderberry
syrup to start. There are lots of elderberries around here in Sac–but are they still good to eat this late in the season?
Don’t know if you can find piloncillo in your local South-of-the-Border grocery store, but, MY, MY! what a taste treat of healthy sweets! For some of the best ever rhubarb sauce, berry syrups, marmalades, and whatever else calls for loads of sweetness, piloncillo is impossible to be beat! If it’s still not totally sweet enough, I also add a few pinches of Stivita brand stevia, but usually, just the piloncillo is sufficient.
Today, along with the smoked salmon back I made soup stock and salad bits from, I put fresh-picked rasp and wild blackberries in a sauce pan – no added water – and a small cone of solid piloncillo [Pilopncillo is solidified, dehydrated raw sugar cane juice], and ft it to simmer at tthe lowest possible heat for about four hours. The berry juice separated, and the gentle heat and liquid dissolved the piloncillo cone, and I finished it with a couple of tablespoons of corn starch, after thoroughly breaking all the berry kernels.
Yummy!
Hi – just wanted to say your post for elderberry syrup is beautiful and it inspired me to look past the ripening glut of tomatoes that need processing to a bush (cultivated not wild) in the back garden brimming with ripe berries (I’m in Canada at the eastern tip of Lake Ontario). So I picked some and used the tines of a fork to gently rake the berries from the stems – worked well and was able to de stem in a half hour. Your book is at the top of my wish list and so shortly will be on my kitchen counter. Best of luck with your book tour.
Cheryl: No idea, sorry! But honey tends to be sweeter than sugar, so I’d start with a 2/3 ratio and go from there. Remember honey has its own flavor, too, so you will not have a pure elderberry flavor in this syrup.
Hi! How much if you convert 3 pounds of elderberries to cups? Same proportions if I use honey instead of sugar? Thanks a lot!
Hank, awesome site! Elderberry syrup is on my list. I have been making Gooserry Jam and wanted to do something with Elerberries too. Thanks for the info.. Now off to get some doves tomorrow.
De stemming is not that difficult if you flick them off the stems with a fork
as advised in other sites. In uk the berries are dark red not blue
Best not to use blender as they boil down once you have pulled berries
off the stems. Cut from bush at the thicker stems to hold all the stems on
the bunch together before discarding them together. Happy berrying!
Adriann: Yes, you can use a Vitamix, blender of food processor, but be very careful about over processing — you don’t want to crush the seeds, which are bitter. Maybe try just a couple pulses rather than letting the blender go full blast.
Do you think you can use a blender or vitamix for this? I have been making elderberry syrup for 3 years now with the 2 huge bushes in my yard but it is soooo time consuming to strain and pop them all! I would appreciate any input on this. I do not own an immersion blender and I make a ton of this stuff and give it to family members to keep them healthy all winter!
Thanks!
Tom: I’ve made elderflower syrup for years!
You should also look at making the elderflower syrup or cordial. It is truly delicious and reminds me of spring.
Wow, do I love this site! You are my kinda people.
Last winter I made an elderberry syrup with honey to ward off the winter nasties. It was too late for fresh berries but boiling dried ones worked great. Either the nasties didnt get close to me or this worked.
Incredibly healthy syrup and this year I have my own bees to provide the honey.
Hi Hank,
Love reading your blog and look forward to trying out this method for making elderberry syrup. Would love if you could do a piece on mindful foraging and how it is not nice to park and/or forage from “posted” private property , especially when the homeowner has asked them not to (this is for the two gals driving the silver mini van parked on my property, using a red wagon, foraging elderberries from the trail yesterday, and fruits/vegs from the adjacent farms!).
Thanks! Carolyn from Southport (West Sacramento, CA).
JR: DEFINITELY make some yourself – it is about 300x cheaper than using that Sambucol syrup you buy in the store. Nothing beats free…
Deana: No, whatever you tried was NOT elderberry. Elderberry is sweet and tart, not bitter. Just Google “blue elderberries” or click on the link above for destemming elderberries – that has a good image of what they look like.
Maia: Just tell your family its a sweet syrup for pancakes or whatever. If you don’t tell them it is medicinal, they’ll never notice.
OregonCoastGardener: Nope, never use red elderberries. They are at best nasty, at worst toxic, depending on who you ask. Either way, they are not good eats. Stick with the blue elderberries.
I’ve got my eye on a huge amount of berries. Made this last year using a food mill but I’ll try an immersion blender this time and see how it goes. Time to pull out clothes to wear when processing items that stain!
Thanks for the recipes. I cant wait for our elderberries to get ripe enough to use. I am from Europe, so it´ll take some time.
Hank,
Do you ever use red elderberries for this recipe? Or any other recipe… they are all over the place on the central coast of Oregon right now and lots of people have asked me… thanks.
Hey Hank,
Thanks for this recipe! I am always looking for different ways to use elderberries. Not only are they great for fighting the flu but they also lower cholesterol, improve vision, boost the immune system, improve heart health and are great for coughs, colds, bacterial and viral infections and tonsilitis. Mangiare!
-me
I’m sorry to say I have made elderberry syrup the last three years and no one in my family will use it be me. : ( I use it particularly throughout flu season in my morning filmjölk (a Swedish soured milk, kind of like yogurt) with muesli since elderberries are supposedly excellent at curbing the flu and miniminzing recovery time. Maybe I’ll give it one more shot this year with your recipe. I’m also really keen on trying your elderberry ice cream recipe. Thank you for the post.
I was walking the dog and found what I thought to be an elderflower bush by the pond. The berry tasted terrible but looked right… is there something nasty that looks like it? Trying to get a good picture of a leaf on line to see if I have the right thing because I love elderberry jam and would like to make it. Does it have a horrible bitter taste?
Excited for my elder flower liquer! Shook it for the first time two weeks ago. Used Grappa! I’ll have to try this next.
My father smelled of elderberries…..
Aside from them being plentiful and delicious they are incredibly medicinal. A couple of teaspoons throughout the day when you are feeling the symptoms of a cold can help immensely.
My favorite is on vanilla ice cream though. I made a balsamic elderberry reduction on a whim once that was great with pork….maybe I should get around to making some for myslef instead of raiding our medicine cabinet.
Now that I’ve got to try. It’ll be a while on this side of the pond before the berries are ready – just finished racking the elder flower wine.
Regards,
John