Okay, this is an old recipe. Very much in the style of "medicinal purposes" (seriously - it used to be used by the spoonful to ward of colds etc.). Very simple but a lovely comforting drink.
First pick your blackberries. Nice ripe plump ones. Discard those that are too "squishy" to pick cleanly or too hard to come away without the stalk. If no-one ever taught you, the right way to pick a blackberry is to hold it between thumb and forefinger and turn it to 90 degrees from the stem - not to pull it straight off.
As a small aside, I picked up a great bit of foraging kit recently from a supermarket - a lidded 2 gallon bit of imitation tuperware with a hinged lid and a shopping basket handle - perfect for blackberrying!
So get your blackberries home. You will need one pound of blackberries per full sized bottle of brandy. I always end up picking lots but hey, whats not to like ablout blackberry and apple crumble with any extras?
Weight your blackberries out. I have a set of balance scales (old fashioned bloke that I am). So I put a glass bowl on the pan side and balnce it out with metric weights (I have both) on the weight side. I then add a pound weight to the weight side and keep putting blackberries in the bowl until I have a pound in the bowl
I then wash off the blackberries by emptying the bowl into a collander and running them under the tap
I put each pound of washed blackberries into a large jam pan and add half a pound of sugar per pound of balckberries
When you have weighed out as many pounds of blackberries as you wish to make bottles of brandy, put a low heat on under your jam pan. Don't go in with a high heat or you will burn the sugar. You want the juices to start to flow from the berries and make a lot of liquid before increasing the heat a bit to ensure all the sugar is dissolved
After a bit of gentle stewing your berries should look like this
Now, its important to let your blackberries and sugar cool down before going any further. You could just remove the pan from the heat, but I tend to cool in glass bowls. Effectively you have a sort of runny jam at this stage. Its worth remembering though that hot jam is VERY hot. If you add brandy to it now, all the alcohol will evapourate.
Now, you need to mix in one 75cl bottle of brandy for each pound of blackberries. mix well with a metal spoon (blackberries stain wood something awful). Whatever you use needs to be able to be sealed. I use tightly lidded white food grade plastic buckets but, for a small batch a glass bowl covered in clingfilm is fine
Put a lid on and leave for five days or so for the brandy to take on all the flavours of the balckberries. Alcohol will avpourate so a good seal is important here. You could use a demijohn and airlock if you like.
I'll post the rest when mine is ready - I should get about 6 full sized bottles from this as the juice adds to the amount of liquid. For those of you planning to buy brandy, just get a reasonable cheap brandy - the blackberry flavour will overwhelm best Armagnac!
Red
