Medicinal Elderberry Syrup

Help fight those colds with this Medicinal Elderberry Syrup My Recipe Tweaked From Homespun Seasonal Living. 1 teaspoon daily. Can be added to a drink kumbucha for the second fermentation, poured over ice cream.

• Ready In: 1 hr
• Serves: 100
• Yields: 4-5 cups

Ingredients

• 6  cups elderberries
• 3  cups  water water
• 20  lemon verbena leaves
• 20  holy basil leaves
• 3  inches cinnamon sticks
• 3  whole cloves
• 1  lemon slice
• 3  tablespoons fresh ginger, Chopped
• 1⁄3-1  cup raw honey, to taste

Directions

1. Put elderberries in a pot with half their volume of water, herbs and spices. Simmer, mash berries and stir occasionally for about 1 hours or until reduced by about half. Strain the berries and squeeze out the juice using cheesecloth or a jelly bag. Unlike making jelly, you want to squeeze the berries and get out as much of the juice as possible rather than letting drain on its own.
2. Once strained and just barely warm mix in honey to taste. You do not want to kill all the goodness (5,000 live enzymes) raw honey provides so don`t heat it. You can store the syrup in the fridge, freezer.