Sloe Gin

For the past few years round about this time of year, J and I have discussed trying our hand at making sloe gin, usually prompted by seeing an abundantly-laden bush whilst out walking. Last weekend, we began such a discussion once again, but in contrast to previous years, we started picking some sloes from the bush that triggered the discussion, which we duly carried home. Every day last week, I planned to go back to the same bushes, which are not far from our house, to pick enough to make some sloe gin, but never got round to doing so. But today, we did make it and came home with loads of sloes. This evening, we put together our sloes, gin and sugar, using the easy recipe/proportions on the great blog, A Trifle Rushed (for the sloe gin post, see here). Our proportions are not as well measured as they are on A Trifle Rushed, and vary from bottle to bottle (just slightly competitively we’ve made a note of who did which bottle), but I thought I’d share what we did here. Closer to Christmas, when we crack them open, I’ll let you know how they taste. Apologies in advance for the pictures – it was evening when I took them and I lost the natural light…

For now, I’m praising God for, and raising my glass for a virtual clink in celebration of a job starting tomorrow!

What you’ll need (for each bottle of sloe gin):

1/3 bottle sloes

1/3 bottle white sugar

1/3 bottle gin

What to do:

1. Go out and pick some juicy looking sloes.

2. Prick each sloe with a cocktail stick.

3. Fill each bottle about a 1/3 of the way full with the pricked sloes (as you can see we interpreted that measurement quite loosely!).

4. Pour about a 1/3 of a bottle of sugar on to the sloes.

5. Fill the bottle to the top with gin (sorry – I didn’t get a picture of this stage…).

6. Swirl it all around to mix together and then leave to one side. You may need to re-fill the bottle slightly as everything settles over the next couple of hours.

7. Shake up the bottle once or twice a week to mix everything together and leave somewhere to mature and become yummy!