Make Your Own Juice and Syrup: A Year in Bottles

There is this moment in January when everything outside is grey and you fetch a bottle from the cellar that smelled of elderflower back in June. One sip in a glass of water, and the whole early summer fills the room again. That is exactly what making your own juice and syrup is about: you bottle the harvest and stretch the summer across the entire year.

The lovely thing is that you need no expensive equipment. A big pot, a sieve, a clean cloth and a few bottles are enough to start. Only once the apple tree really bears in autumn does a press become worth thinking about. We will walk through the garden year in order, from the first elderflower in May to the last apple in October.

A Year in Bottles

Before we get to the craft, a look at the calendar helps. Every ingredient has its window, and once you know it, you miss nothing.

The Beginning: Elderflower Syrup

Hardly any syrup is as rewarding as the one made from elderflowers. It costs you not a single cent in raw material, because the black elder, Sambucus nigra, grows along almost every field edge and in many gardens. What matters is the right day: harvest when the umbels are fully open and fragrant in the sun, best in the late morning once the dew has dried. Process them the same day, because the fine scent fades quickly.

Shake the umbels out gently and do not wash them, or you rinse away the pollen that carries all the flavour. Tap out any small crawlers. Cut off the coarse stems; a little green left on the florets is fine. About twenty to thirty umbels are enough for a batch with one litre of water.

1. Prepare the sugar water

   Briefly bring one litre of water and 800 g of sugar to a boil until the sugar has dissolved, then let it cool to lukewarm.

2. Add flowers and acid

   Add 25 elderflower umbels, two sliced organic lemons and 25 g of citric acid. The acid preserves the syrup and keeps the colour bright.

3. Let it steep

   Cover the batch and keep it cool. After one to two days the water has taken on scent and flavour.

4. Strain

   Pour everything through a fine sieve lined with a clean cloth. Do not squeeze the umbels, or the syrup turns cloudy and bitter.

5. Reheat and bottle

   Heat the syrup once more to about 80 degrees and fill it hot into sterile bottles straight away. Seal tightly, done.

Green Syrups from Herbs

Once the elderflower is over, the herbs take over. Peppermint and lemon balm make a refreshing syrup between CW 24 and 30 that recalls mild evenings in winter. The principle stays the same: a large handful of fresh leaves, one litre of hot sugar water, the juice of two lemons and a day of steeping. Treat sweet woodruff more carefully, because its coumarin only tastes good in moderation; let it wilt and steep it for two hours at most.

Berry Syrup: the Bold Middle of Summer

By late June it is time for the berries, and this is where juice really turns to colour. Currants are the classics: the red ones give acidity and brightness, the black ones a deep, almost tart note. For a berry syrup you do not pluck the berries one by one; you briefly simmer the whole clusters soft with a little water, crush them and let the juice drip through a cloth overnight. The next day you measure the juice, add about 700 to 800 g of sugar per litre, bring it to a boil once and bottle it hot.

Aronia, the chokeberry, joins in from mid August. It is tart and dark and needs a little more sugar and a dash of lemon to round out. The effort is worth it, because hardly any syrup has so much colour and depth. You will find more about the plant and the harvest in the article Aronia, the native superfood, and everything about the three colours of the currant in Currants, red, white and black.

Autumn Belongs to the Apple

When the trees really bear from mid September, the largest harvest of the year arrives all at once. A single old standard tree of a variety like Apple 'Boskoop' or Apple 'Gravenstein' can shower you with several hundredweight. Eat fresh, give away, store: in the end there is often a heap that only makes sense as juice. And homemade pressed juice beats any bought one.

For small amounts a steam juicer on the stove is enough. It steams the juice out of the fruit, you catch it hot and fill it straight into bottles. This juice is clear, mild and keeps for months. For larger amounts you need a fruit mill and a press: first the apples are chopped into mash, then pressed. The cloudy juice gained this way tastes more intense but has to be preserved.

1. Wash and sort the apples

   Sort out anything rotten, cut away bruises generously. The rest may be irregular, you will not taste it in the juice.

2. Chop

   Work the apples into a coarse mash with a fruit mill or a sturdy shredder. The finer the mash, the more juice the press yields.

3. Press

   Fill the mash into a pressing cloth and build up pressure slowly. Patience yields more juice here than force.

4. Pasteurise

   Heat the juice to 78 to 80 degrees, hold briefly, do not boil. Above 80 degrees the flavour suffers.

5. Bottle hot

   Fill into clean bottles or a bag-in-box and seal at once. That way the juice keeps until next summer.

Shelf Life and Hygiene

Whether syrup or juice, shelf life stands or falls on two things: clean bottles and hot bottling. Rinse the bottles with hot water and stand them in the oven at 120 degrees for ten minutes, or boil them out. Boil the lids separately. Always fill hot, then a slight vacuum pulls the lid tight as it cools and seals it.

Opened bottles belong in the fridge and are good there for about two to three weeks. If syrup turns stringy, moulds or smells of fermentation, it has to go; that almost only happens with too little sugar or unclean bottling. With the classic ratio of 1 to 1 sugar to liquid you are on the safe side.

Where to Start

If you do only one thing this year, make the elderflower syrup in late May. It costs almost nothing, works almost every time and tastes so good that you carry on by yourself. The apple juice in autumn is the big brother that asks for a bit more equipment but fills the pantry for months. Everything in between is a playground: try herbs, mix berries, note down what you like. In a few years you will have your own recipes, and that is the real point of it all.