Sloe Gin – Recipes

Sloe Gin, the ruin of old women.. Or tasty cooking ingredient? Either way one thing is for sure, its fantastic taken out in a hip flask and every sip is warming and gratifying on a brisk winters outing. Sloe Gin can be, and is used as an ingredient. It is included within many cocktail recipes including; The Moll Flanders, Ruby Fizz, Sloe Comfortable Screw and unsurprisingly the Blackthorn. But is also readily used as a cooking ingredient to flavour; Sloe Gin Jelly, Plums roasted with Sloe Gin or a simply used to flavour Gamey sauces. If you use it for cooking or simply love the taste this recipe is simple, delicious and will last for years – if you let it!

Ingredients

1kg Sloes or Blackthorn berries (post frost)

1Lt Gin

300g Demerara Sugar

100g White Sugar

It’s a fiddly job, but someone has got to do it! The first job is to prick every individual Sloe with a pin or needle and place in large bowl. Add the Gin and Sugar to the bowl and give it a good stir.

Now, you are going to need some sort of container that you can lid, big clean jars, demi johns, large bottles with lids what ever you have got and can make watertight. Decant the Gin, Sloe and Sugar mix into your container making sure that the Sloes get evenly distributed through all of the containers.

Be patient… You have to store these little fruity containers up or 3 months. This is going to give the fruit time to impart its flavours into the Gin. This isn’t a make and leave item either, you have to take care of it and turn it every other day.. Hey, if you miss a day or two every now and then now worries just make sure you give them a little mix up when you do remember (Make sure its quite regular though!).

….. 3 months later.

Through a double thickness of muslin strain the Sloe mixture (do not squeeze the fruit) and allow gravity to do the rest. Repeat this process several times until the mixture runs clear. Now decant again into clean bottles and that’s it!

You can drink straight away or even better leave it for a year! It will literally last for years and years and over the years can you build up a nice array of vintages.

Fantastic drink that requires patience, real patience!! But is soooo worth it!

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