Elderberry Wine

I currently have 2 batches of beer bottled. The lager has been in for 4 weeks and the stout just a week. I also have the Cooper’s ale fermenting in the bucket waiting to go into the king keg. So I still have a while to wait before I can reap what I have sown which has led me to try something different.
I have bought 2 of the wine starter kits from Art of Brewing. They contained a gallon plastic demijohn with an airlock, corks, syphon, tap and a small pot of steriliser. You have to buy one of the beer kits at the same time as buying a starter kit so I chose to buy a cabernet sauvignon and an elderberry.
I’ll describe the process I used for the elderberry here and post another blog for the cabernet as they are slightly different.
The elderberry kit contained the following:

• Elderberry juice in a tin
• Wine Yeast
• Nutrafine
• Wine Stabaliser
• Flavouring Sachet
• Wine Finings

1. The first step was to sterilise the demijohns. I used 2 teaspoons of sterilising powder for each demijohn and left them for 30 minutes, before rinsing them with cold tap water.
2. Next I emptied the juice into the demijohn and mixed in 1.8 litres of cold water.
3. This kit required an additional 450g of granulated sugar which I dissolved in 0.6 litres hot water and added to the mixture.
4. Next I added the sachet of yeast and the nutrafine (which is a yeast nutrient, encouraging cell division) and shook the the mixture.
5. The mixture should be between 20-25 degrees celcius but I do not have a thermometer so I am hoping the temperature in my kitchen will be in the correct range.
6. At this point the air lock was bubbling about every 20 seconds. After 3 days I topped the demijohn up to 4.5 litres with more cold water, and shook it up.
7. I now need to leave this until fermentation is complete, which I can test using the hydrometer to get a reading of 1000-1006. However since adding the water the bubbling has been very slow maybe only once every 5 minutes.

Steps still left is to add the stabaliser, flavouring and finings and shaking before leaving the wine to clear for 7-21 days. Once clear the wine can be bottled and left to mature for 3 months. Another long wait before drinking!