elderberries' Centuries Old History!

Elderberries and their history

Elderberries have been a companion to Man since the Stone Age and grow wild in the temperate zones around the world. Red elderberries are found in China, Blue elderberries in the Rocky Mountains, and Black elderberries (sambucus nigra) through out Europe and the Americas. Black elderberries are a dark purple berry that has many naturally occurring nutritional substances: Anthocyanins, Quercetin, Rutin, Polyphenols, Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids and are naturally low in sugar. Elderberry products are often named Sambucus because the Latin Genus name for elderberry is Sambucus Nigra.

Elderberries are an important fruit crop in European Countries where elderberry products can be found in most grocery stores.

working with elderberries

Elderberries’ relatively thin skin makes long term storage as fruit very difficult, unlike citrus fruit. They are prepared for long term storage by one of three methods: Extracts (fruit processed with chemicals, especially alcohol, to “extract parts of the elderberry”), Powders (by drying and crushing the elderberries), and Liquid Concentrate (juice concentrates are produced by removing water from the natural juice to concentrate the fruit solids by vacuum distillation under 145° Fahrenheit).

Difference Between Types of Elderberry Products

Most elderberry products are:

    - capsules or tablets of dried elderberry powder
    - liquid mixtures of extracts or dried powder and alcohol, sugar, or other sweeteners
    - concentrate made by mixing other juice concentrates with elderberry products
This wide variety of forms and strengths of the extracts used makes comparisons between products extremely difficult and confusing. Most products have a suggested daily amount, which can be used to compare the cost per day of each product. The supplement or nutrition panel displays the serving size and the number of servings in the container. Divide the cost by the number of servings and multiply by the suggested servings per day.

How many Grams of Elderberry in a teaspoon of your Concentrate?

This is somewhat hard to answer as grams are a unit of mass (weight) which implies dried elderberry powder, and a teaspoon is a unit of volume which implies a liquid. Many elderberry products use grams of dried elderberries to make their product.

We are the only pure 100% Elderberry Concentrate on the market. Our ingredient list is Elderberry Concentrate and Water. Our concentrate does not contain “standardized extracts” or dried elderberry powders, only pure concentrated elderberry juice.

Our 12.5 fluid ounce bottle of our concentrate takes 3.6 pounds of elderberries to produce. One teaspoon takes 21.8 grams of elderberries to produce. Elderberry juice contains 10% dissolved solids and 90% water. If you would take out all of the water, you have a 10x concentration. One teaspoon of our concentrate contains 1.555 grams (1555 milligrams) of solids or 1555 milligrams of 10x concentrated elderberry juice. The drying and extraction processes remove the water based compounds.

Elderberries are naturally low in sugar. One tablespoon of juice (or one teaspoon of our concentrate) contains less than one gram of sugar. Many elderberry products contain added sugar and/or non-elderberry juice concentrates which adds unnecessary calories. We do not do this, we only add water to our Elderberry Super Concentrate to produce 100% Natural Elderberry Concentrate. It has a very tart concentrated flavor, many people add it to their favorite beverage.