We Bottled 30 Litres of Elderflower Champagne While Rebuilding Our 200-Year-Old Farm

Today we are going to continue with the champagne preparation and to step number two. Very well, we have here where the champagne is going to be and ta-da! What is now? I have sanitized everything so don't you worry. I will pass everything with this little jar that is sanitized as well because it's so heavy. We will as much as we can. So what you see me using here is a chain mortar which is a framer's best friend for hogging out a lot of material in a very quick manner and clean and straight. It's brilliant. It's a brilliant bit of kit. The reason how we can really hog out a lot of material is because of the chain so it's very very aggressive going into the material and churning it all up and chewing it all out and spitting it out. It's fine to a certain degree when doing jointing for framework, creating mortising and tenoning for frames, you can be a bit rough. It's not like using a workshop mortising machine which is a chisel with an auger inside so the corners are a little bit... they're not perfect perfect but for this kind of work you can't beat it. You cannot beat a chain mortar. The time it would take you... well the time it would take me to make a mortise like this in oak would be... I don't even want to think about it. I used to do it before I got this bad boy but now it makes light work of doing a good square solid mortise and really quickly. So brilliant bit of kit. Now that I've done these mortises I'm going to do the lap joint on the header but I'm also going to do a lap joint on the wall plate. This is going to have to come off a few times for me to get the beams into the actual garage to get them into place. So what's going to be good is that on the wall plate itself we'll have a shoulder for this to sit into and also the header itself will have a lap joint for that to sit into it so it's all locked into place doing my fingers. I'm going to get on with it now and then I can show you what I'm trying to explain. For a quick lunch today I'm making with the duck eggs a little frittata with leftovers and it will taste so much better with fresh parsley which we have here. The vlogger's house yes. This is mint wrong parsley. There we are Just on time. I was coming to look for you because you were not hungry seems like You did a frittita. Frittata. Frittata. Should we eat outside or inside? Yeah definitely let's go inside. I will bring my plate. Thank you darling. That's a nice lunch huh? This is perfect Absolutely perfect. Bon appétit After straining out all the flowers and lemon the liquid is ready for the next stage so now it's time to sanitize every bottle before we fill them with our future elderflower champagne. Our neighbors are coming over in a couple of weeks so the timing couldn't be more perfect. Hopefully by then the champagne will have finished its process and be ready to share. I really hope this works out well. I'm a little bit nervous if I'm honest but I'm also excited. You have been so patient with me while I'm learning all these new things and I honestly can't thank you enough for your sweetness and for all the tips you leave in the comments. We are still in good track huh? Sanitizing everything. Actually just stay for a moment there. We are going to rinse this one. It was a quick rinse because these are new bottles. Just a little quick rinse and then sanitization. Sanitation? Sanitation? I don't know. Okay and now yes we can sanitize. I love that I'm using this thing that we bought actually for the wallpaper in the bedroom. Remember the wallpaper that uses only water to glue on the walls? So I kept the bottle as I do and now I'm using it for this which has a lovely lovely spray. Some foam in the bottle is totally okay. It's what I've read. I like to sanitize the bottom again. Just a little bit outside just in case. Very good. We just have a lot more to do. Noises. Okay this is ready. A little bit of foam is totally fine inside for more. Okay and here we have all the extras. I have to go quickly to the supermarket and buy there because when I bought the other bottles half of them came totally broken. So look they look very pretty actually. I'm going to put them here. Stay there. And all this actually too. Put them here. Perfecto. I must say this is my favorite design so far. Either nothing or this one. This is lovely. But I remember now we have another one. Isn't this cute? Hello beautiful. Are you supervising? Okay she's staying. You want to check how I work? Yes? Okay I'm done. This is all. My patience has a limit. It's the third or fourth time I washed that one and I put it there to dry but now as it's a little bit windy every time to time it comes down and I was about to finish the last bottle and both of them came down. So you know what? I need a break. So I will start bottling the rest that is all ready but these three bottles. Maybe I have enough? We don't know but just in case because that one, the little doggy one, oh my gosh it fell so many times. The little dog looks very friendly but actually it has been very naughty with me. You see it's pretty pretty windy. But I have everything I need so we can start putting everything into the bottle. Okay we are going to fill up the nice bottles in the time actually. In the time that this finishes draining you say? Okay let's see how many bottles we can fill up with that. We need to leave some space for the bottles. Thank you very much and just like that. Next! And it's almost ending the day but we have made it. This is the last bottle, that's the last bit of champagne. We have this much too here and plenty more inside the peri where they can be dry and cool. And even if I use some fresh flowers as you saw me picking the last bits of fresh flowers and that with the yellow part and not washing them you can have yeast from there, natural yeast. I added a little bit of a yeast for especially for champagne that I found online and with the recommendations so I add as well a little bit of that. So now in two days I'm going to open one bottle and check how the fermentation is coming, if it's bubbles or not. And there we have the collection of bottles all waiting for the fermentation there. And I keep it a little bit separate just in case one of them goes poop. But as well because of the floor there is so uneven that wherever I could place them standing up I just put them there. Fingers crossed we can have the beautiful champagne and it's going to be beautiful. And as I promised, oh friends the cows are like crazy on the other side. But yeah if everything goes well and it's tasty and yummy then I will share the recipe with you all. See you on Saturday.