Feedback on ELDERBERRIES

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The last of Faith Lasher's recipes on page 25 of MOTHER NO. 22 is for elder flower, not elderberry wine. ( You're right, Sandra . . . my hand slipped when I set the title.—MOTHER ) and looks to me as if it would turn out sickly-sweet.

Our favorite elder flower wine formula—and we've tried five or six, including ones with raisins, hops, oranges and Lord knows what all—is the simplest: Snip a quart of flowers from the stems, pour a gallon of boiling water over them and let the tea steep three or four days with the blossoms pressed down under the liquid (they turn brown and spoil the color of the drink if they're exposed to air). Sometimes we soak orange peel at the same time, but it makes the infusion harder to clear.

Strain off the fluid and heat some of it to dissolve two to two and a half pounds of sugar per gallon. If you have a hydrometer, aim at an 11% alcohol content—no more—for the finished product. When the solution cools, add the juice of two lemons or limes per gallon along with yeast. (You can use bread yeast-one package to five gallons-but the same amount of dry wine yeast will give you an infinitely better drink.) Then let the mixture work like any other such beverage . . . in a container that can be stopped with an air lock to let carbon dioxide out and keep air, bacteria and whatnot from getting in. Large batches, incidentally, are less likely to go bad than small lots.

For elder berry wine, pick nice plump berries about two days ahead of the birds (second or third week of August here in New York State) and strip them from the stems. You can use a fork and save your fingers, but I find my hands are faster. Then crunch up the fruit as if you were kneading dough. You'll need paint thinner later on to remove the gummy sap from your skin!

Pour boiling water over the purple mess (one gallon for every two gallons of fruit) and let the mixture steep for about a week, punching down the berries occasionally. Keep the crock covered with a towel to protect the working "must" from dust and the odd yeast floating around in the air.

Then strain off and save the juice and mix three and a half to four pounds of sugar into each gallon of the liquid. (There's a lot of acid in elderberries and they can easily take care of that much sweetening ... the alcohol content will go higher than 15%. It's best to make additions of sugar in two or three lots a couple of days apart, or the fermentation can be explosive.)

Add one packet of dry wine yeast per five gallons of liquid (I like the madeira or port type, but that's because we make our wine a trifle sweet to drink with soda and lime in the summer). Let 'er rip! You can improve the product by racking it . . . which means siphoning it off the dregs into clean, sterile containers every three months or so. We never consider our homemade beverage fit to drink until we bottle it when it's about two years old.