Note that this will make enough for 1 gallon or 4.5 liters of wine. 1.) First, bring your water to a boil, then stir in the sugar to dissolve it. Remove it from the heat. 2.) Get your elderberries inside the straining bag, then place them inside a sterilized primary fermentation bin. Crush them thoroughly with a potato masher. 3.)
Brix is a unit of measure used in wine-making to determine how much alcohol a juice such as wine grapes or in this case, elderberry juice, are likely to produce. Your alcohol by volume (ABV) will be roughly half of your starting Brix. Elderberry has about 11 Brix naturally. At best, elderberry wine would have about 5.5% alcohol by volume.
If this is impossible, pour a bit of the debris-laden juice though a fine-mesh sieve into another bucket, or a big bowl. Using the big carboy funnel, pour the strained juice from the bowl into the 3-gallon carboy. Now you will want to get all the wine locked in the elderberry skins into the carboy.
And if you make a batch of elderberry vinegar you can use it to marinate meat, make a sweet and tangy salad dressing, or even make a homemade elderberry switchel!