I ended up having to enlist the help of my husband to get the elderberries off the stems yesterday afternoon. I have familial essential tremors, that makes it very difficult for me to do a lot of things with my hands, because they shake so badly. I was having a heck of a time getting the berries off the stems.
The elderberries were in two feed sacks. We guesstimate that by the time we combined those feed sacks, we had a full 50 pound feed sack of elderberries. DH spent over an hour, stripping berries off after rinsing them. I then dumped them into my water bath canning pot and just covered them with water. They ended up being about an inch and a quarter below the top edge.
I then put a lid on the pot, turned the burner on the stove to low, and left it there for several hours while it simmered. Occasionally I checked it and gave it to stir with one of my big commercial kitchen spoons (from my goat milk days). By 11 o’clock last night I could tell that the juice had cooked out of the berries, and they were finally done, but I didn’t have any place to put them to cool down. So I just left them on the stove covered. I figured they had been simmering at just under a boil for hours, so there couldn’t be any bacteria in the juice and it should be safe until morning.
This morning they were actually still just a little bit warm. I got my 16 cup Cuisinart out and put the small plastic blade, which I think is a dough blade, and got my big commercial ladle out. About four of those ladles filled the Cuisinart about 3/4 full. I turned it on for about two minutes, and the pulp was separated from the seeds and skin.
DH held a nylon milk strainer bag over one of my 2-1/2 gallon stainless steel buckets while I poured the sludge from the Cuisinart into the bag. I then began ringing all the liquid out, and ended up with about a cup of dry pulp. Rinse and repeat about 15 times. By the time I was finished, I had two buckets about 3/4 full. So I figure I got 4 1/2 or 5 GALLONS of juice out of all those elderberries. NOT BAD!
I then poured the juice through the straining bag, one more time and put it on the stove, bringing it up to 185°F, to make sure I killed off any bacteria. It is now sitting on the stove cooling off, so I can pour it into freeze dryer trays and freeze it solid, before I put it in the freeze dryer. Ask me how I know it makes a mess if you try to pour liquid into the trays while they are in the freeze dryer.
I have been making elderberry syrup and elderberry juice for seven or eight years now, and I learned something new today!
After I got the juice reheating on the stove, and was cleaning my equipment, I found what appeared to be brown grease smeared in my sink.
I tried scrubbing it with dish soap, and it just smeared around and made a mess. I ended up having to get my CitruSolve orange cleaner out and scrubbing it with that. I also had it on my hands and utensils. At first, I couldn’t figure out where this grease came from. But then I realized it had to have come from the elderberries. The nylon bag that I used to strain the juice from the berries, was covered with it. WHAT A MESS to clean up! So it appears that elderberries have some sort of resin in them. Two well-known resins, that I use a lot for healing lotions, are frankincense and myrrh resins. Maybe that accounts for some of the exceptional healing powers of elderberries! That just proves you are never too old to learn something new!
harvestright.com
When I first learned about them four or five years ago, I figured I would never be able to afford one, because they were several thousand dollars. Then, in March of 2020, my dear sister (who lived in San Jose, CA) died and I was the executor of her estate.
And the man who bought it didn’t even negotiate the price. He was thrilled to get the truck. 
