This is a rather belated post on how I made my sloe gin with the sloes I collected a couple of months ago.
As I wasn't quite ready to start right after picking the sloes, I split my harvest up into bags of 500g (just over a lb) and put them in the freezer. I also figured freezing them would mimic to some extent the effect of a frost on the sloes; and that is to soften the skins of the fruit which will result in more flavour exuding from them. It also saves pricking each one with a pin!. I also thought it might be a good idea to find out where Gordon's Gin was cheapest. I'd heard from two different sources that yes it does make a difference if you use cheap gin, and no it doesn't! So I thought it best to try and have the best of both worlds and buy a good gin when it was on offer.
A quick google found that in one particular week it was on offer at Asda so a trip to a nearby town was needed, luckily by my friend Judi as she works there several days a week.
A few days later and I was good to go. I think I roughly followed the recipe in my go-to preserving book, The Preserving Book, but I can't remember; which is really useful! Well the book is. I'm not!
I took out one bag of 500g of sloes from the freezer and split them evenly between two 1ltr Kilner jars. This is where it goes a bit pear-shaped...I might have added about 100g of caster sugar to each jar and then I definitely added 1 litre of gin between the two jars i.e. about 500ml per jar.
And then you wait, well kind of. For the first week you need to give the jars a shake each day to help the sugar dissolve. Within a week all of the sugar has been absorbed.
And then you wait, again. After six weeks or so you *need* to have a little taste of the contents to see if you need to add any more sugar; the resulting sloe gin should taste like a sweet liqueur so after tasting I added a couple of heaped tablespoons of sugar and did the shake thing for a few days afterwards until it had dissolved.
I'll take another taste in a few weeks time and it should then hopefully be ready at Christmas!
Joanna
A quick google found that in one particular week it was on offer at Asda so a trip to a nearby town was needed, luckily by my friend Judi as she works there several days a week.
A few days later and I was good to go. I think I roughly followed the recipe in my go-to preserving book, The Preserving Book, but I can't remember; which is really useful! Well the book is. I'm not!
I took out one bag of 500g of sloes from the freezer and split them evenly between two 1ltr Kilner jars. This is where it goes a bit pear-shaped...I might have added about 100g of caster sugar to each jar and then I definitely added 1 litre of gin between the two jars i.e. about 500ml per jar.
And then you wait, well kind of. For the first week you need to give the jars a shake each day to help the sugar dissolve. Within a week all of the sugar has been absorbed.
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Day 3
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And then you wait, again. After six weeks or so you *need* to have a little taste of the contents to see if you need to add any more sugar; the resulting sloe gin should taste like a sweet liqueur so after tasting I added a couple of heaped tablespoons of sugar and did the shake thing for a few days afterwards until it had dissolved.
I'll take another taste in a few weeks time and it should then hopefully be ready at Christmas!
Joanna
