Sloe gin time again!

Yay! I love sloe gin. Really really love it. In fact i love it so much that the batch i made last year is nearly gone which is shouldn't be because you're not meant to drink it for a year. Naughty me.

Luckily i do still have half a bottle which i hid from myself. It's now been a year so i can crack it open guilt free. Hooray!

In light of this, i went sloe picking the other day with my dad. Well i say sloe picking, there wasn't many to pick! Sloes are in short supply this autumn. Very upsetting. I had to search and search and even then my dad had to let me have all the ones we both picked otherwise there wouldn't have been enough. Thanks dad!

If you have never made sloe gin before then you should, as it's really rather easy. This is all you need:

 

1. Sloes (sometimes easier said than done).

2. Sugar.

3. Gin.

4. An empty bottle.

The only time consuming bit is pricking each sloe a few times with a knife (or cocktail stick if you have one). Then it's just a case of filling up the bottle with sloes. Then sugar. Then gin. Easy. I usually add about a third of a bottle of sloes, a third of sugar and then top it all off with gin. However this time as i had added the gin before the sugar i just added as much sugar as i could fit in the bottle!

You then give it a good shake and leave it. Shake it once a day for a week and then once a week for a few months. Then leave it as long as you can, preferably a year but i never quite seem to be able to manage that. Happy drinking!

(You may notice that the bottle in the third picture doesn't look like the one in the other two. This is because i forgot to take photos after i had made the sloe gin, but that photo shows what it would look like after you'd given it that first good shake up!)