North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Michelle Horner" <shelly2@wi.rr.com>]

Dear Jim Erdman,

I'm glad/sad to hear someone else was debillated by this wax-y build-up.  It is interesting that you had to resort to tossing the carboy--I was thinking that would be my remedy also; so I'm glad I experimented with the Oxy-Clean! 

 

I also like Jim Furth's idea of freezing the elderberries and wacking them off the stems.  I tried the fork thing for cleaning the berries off the stems--I didn't have enough patience. 

 

 I finally squeezed them stems-and-all through the KitchenAid juicer.  So I am sure I was dealing with some stem material.  I did clip the umbells of berries off as close to the berries as possible with a scissors, but there still was the close-up stuff.  But my "secret source" is in a wild, middle of a 6 block undeveloped urban area (small town) that might not exist next year--I had to take advantage of the berries when available.  The squeezed juice was ssooooo thick I cut it with a couple of gallons of water; and ended up with about 8 gallons of original must.  I did my first rack out of carboys and it looks like I'll get a net of about 5 gallons--so I had about three gallons of lees.  And they were gross.  But I am encouage, the little taste I did sample seemed pretty good--nice full body.  All my messes might be worth while. ( had a little siphon accident with the racking and sort of squited all over so I was a little flustered and forgot to test specific gravity.  Maybe next weekend I'll fool around a little and sample and test a little more thoroughly.)