The first frosts hit this part of the country this week, I’ve been eagerly awaiting them. No, I’m not a great fan of chilly weather, I’ve just had my eye on a few little blackthorn bushes that grow along our lane.
Blackthorn berries (prunus spinosa) – better known as sloes – are the important ingredient in that Christmastime favourite, sloe gin. Back to those frosts… it’s recommended that you pick them after a spell of freezing temperatures, as this swells the berries and makes their skin split. If you don’t want to wait, you’ll need to prick each berry with a pin or skewer before steeping them in the gin. Letting the cold weather do the hard work is my preferred method!
Conveniently, for this post, we had half a bottle of Hortus gin left over from those almost forgotten summer gin & tonics. That’s just the right amount for the number of sloes I was able to forage – about 150 grams.
You add half the weight of sloes in sugar; i.e. 75 grams of sugar to 150 grams of berries. The amount of gin you add is much more flexible. Countryfile Magazine recommends 500 grams of sloes to a 70cl bottle of gin, River Cottage say around 325 grams per bottle and The Guardian 350 grams. The ratio that I used was about 300 grams to a bottle.
My sloe gin may just about be ready to crack open at Christmas. Next Christmas – or even the Christmas after that – is optimal time for the fruit to infuse with the alcohol.
Click here to save this sloe gin recipe to Pinterest
Simple sloe gin
Ingredients
- 150 g sloes
- 75 g caster sugar
- 35 cl half a bottle London dry gin
Instructions
- Sterilise a bottle or Kilner/Le Parfait preserving jar
- Rinse, drain and pat dry the sloes
- Add the sloes, sugar and gin. Seal the cork/cap/lid and swirl the contents together for 30 seconds or so. Set aside in a cool, dry, dark spot
- Each day for about a week, swirl the contents together for 10 seconds or so. Once all the sugar has completely dissolved, you can strain to remove the fruit and store the sloe gin (for years... if you can resist the urge to crack it open!)
