It’s time to get picking and pricking if you’re going to ready for the Rye News Sloe Gin Championships next year.
It’ll take place in March, so do not be tempted to drink all your sloe gin at Christmas! Leave some for the new year and let your sloe gin mature gracefully.
There is a good crop of sloes this year, mainly found in hedgerows all around Rye. Never rush to pick the drupes or berries (blackthorn berries), let them mature naturally.
Sloe gin is a red liqueur flavoured with sloe (blackthorn) drupes, a smaller relative of the plum, and normally made with liquids with an alcohol content between 15 and 30 percent by volume. It is made by infusing gin with the bitter-tasting drupes, using sugar to extract the juices from the fruit.
By tradition, the berries are picked after the first frost of winter. Each drupe should be hand pricked with a thorn taken from the bush on which it grew. Connoisseurs also say that the drupes may only be pricked with a silver pin or fork.
Some modern protagonists pick the ripe sloes earlier and freeze them, claiming that this not only splits the drupes and replaces the pricking stage, but by analogy to ice wine, the freezing changes the flavour of the drupes.
Sloe gin is the ideal drink for a cold winter evening and making it is slow, but not laborious. There’s no cooking required, just patience as the sloes steep in the gin.
Ingredients:
450g/1lb sloes
225g/8oz caster sugar
1litre/1¾ pint gin
Preparation method
1. Prick the tough skin of the sloes all over with a clean needle and put in a large sterilised jar.
2. Pour in the sugar and the gin, seal tightly and shake well.
3. Store in a cool, dark cupboard and shake every other day for a week. Then shake once a week for at least two months.
4. Strain the sloe gin through muslin into a sterilised bottle.
This is not really a recipe, more just a loose set of instructions. The nice thing about sloe gin is that it lends itself to improvisation, for example freezing the sloes then hitting them with a hammer instead of pricking them. Some people also add a few blackberries or blueberries.
As well as the sloe gin, we will also have a competition for other spirit based tipples, which could including blackberry whiskey, elderberry liquor, raspberry gin, damson gin and elderflower gin.
All homemade of course.
Image Credits: Dennis Leeds-George .