Grow Your Own Magazine

As autumn approaches and the fruits hang heavy on the trees and bushes I decided that this year I would use the eldberberries as I had found a very nice set of flavoured schnapps recipes!

Not having the room for storing the berries and their stalks I came up with the following to maximise fruit saved and stalks discarded prior to any wine, cordial or liqueur making.

I can 'almost' guarantee that every lady here on the site will have one of these unbelievably cheap devices in their handbags or bathrooms! Single chaps need to invest in one or pinch/borrow one from the ladies in their lives!

A wide toothed styling comb - cost one pound - has taken these weeny fruits clean off the stalks with minimal damage to the berries and perhaps just one percent of stalks hanging on. I'm very happy with my 'invention' - pardon me if someone has already gone there before me - but I'm chuffed with the results! Hope this will make some of you think again before thinking as I did that these berries are too fiddly to bother with.

Its gonna be a good Xmas this year - elderberry schnapps and blackberry and vanilla gin - will someone pick me up when its all over - please!

I've always used a fork. Easy peasy!

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Never thought of that (dim or what? - OK don't say!) - maybe just liked the wider approach to get more of them pesky critters at one time! Just call me a lazy cow!

brilliant idea ..... any nice ladies on here fancy being my girlfriend for the weekend so i can borrow their comb ??

probably not ..... so how do i store the elderberries in the meantime??

If you look at the other thread 'flavoured schnapps' you'll see that our good chum in Denmark recommend they are frozen for a while before converting to falvoured schnapps. Apparently this helps with the tartness of the even ripe berry.

Perhaps wine makers have other ideas?

Surely FG - even you must have a fork like Flummery has suggested? Or perhaps the next chat-up line - "seen a nice styling combs lately my luvverly"? Go - on - you may get lucky!

btw - one used comb - going cheap, cheap, cheap......shut that girlie up fast!

of course i have a fork .... but i don't have a girlfriend .... yet
i'm going to be making wine .......

For winemaking, liqueur-making etc. freezing helps to extract the flavour. It should also be easier to 'strip' berries 'by comb' when in a frozen state...... (must try that one in a few weeks time). I usually strip by thumbnail (same as I do the flowers) and it is incredibly time consuming, but it DOES safely remove any... unexpected items.... (including the under-ripe berries, as well as tiny snails and the odd spider).

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Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

Quark, you over-estimate my sartorial elegance Worth buying such a comb just for the elderberry factor though!

F_G, if your wine is good enough, the ladies probably won't be too concerned re the status of your combs or forks

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Good tips!

But Quark u gonna keep that recipe for yourself?

bvp

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Kitchen fork or Afro comb. Fingers and thumbs just take too long and get very stained. If you have the room to freeze the whole heads in plastic boxes you can just take them out of the freezer and give them a good shake - you still have to separate the berries from the stalks though before you use them.

BVP - see under juicy gossip for the schnapps recipes!