Sloe Gin recipes and help required

[British Red]

Aaah - you need a wife like mine. My last present was seven sets of industrial racking - takes 250kg per shelf - 2m tall, 60cm deep shelves. I racked out one wall of a small barn. Then got load of lidded boxes (wheeled ones on the bottom, smaller ones on the shelves). I now have a bay for preserving kit and jars, a bay for brewing, a bay for soap and potions , a bay for tools, one for traps and misc, two for gardening stuff. Works really well. The "wash house" is lovely and dry, has a woodburner etc. That has shelves for spices, overflow pantry, bottled beer and wine, demijohns etc. Effectively one for storage, one for working. The third is full pf coal and junk, fourth has all the garden equipment and the old garage is the wood store.

I too am running out of space - looks like we'll need to restore the ruined barn

 

[Toddy]

Oh I have the Dexion, but it's not ideal tbh. It ends up so cold at times that condensation becomes a problem I find.
I prefer the wooden racks in the other sheds, but there's just so much stuff. We're a family of a thousand interests and it shows in the kit we end up with.

It's either take over next door or clear out.

I'm trying to clear out

cheers,
M

 

[johnnytheboy]

Mary you could line your dexion with wood, we have it at work and its to cold to store our paint on, so we have had it lines to keep the paint of the cold metal shelving, just a thought.

Anyway to drag you sheddists away from comparing notes, good news on the sloe front, first frost this morning, so I went up and had a look at the sloes, they have been spot on for the last couple of weeks I’m sure but I was away last week on holiday so now I'm back I thought they would be perfect for the picking. Every tree had foot prints around it, taking there is a few of us on the same shooting ground; I guess the other guys have got there first. Nevertheless there was enough left for me, I tried to gauge 1lb as that’s all I really wanted just now, what felt like 1lb in the bag turned out to be 3.5lb on the kitchen scales, oops!!!

The cheapest gin in Tesco was 1.5litres of London dry gin at £18, there was some at £7 for 75cl but it didn’t say it was distilled and looked very much like a compound gin which I just couldn’t face.

Toddy, any bottle and jar to put it in was a challenge until I realised wine bottles will do just fine, in fact I will have a surplus of bottle as usual lol.


I will try the recipes I have so far

1 – Toddy

Half fill the bottle with fruit, cover with sugar (soft brown) bottle with the syrup from stem ginger (my wife’s favourite)

2 – John Fenna

Half fill the bottle with fruit; use half the weight of fruit in sugar, I think this might be sweeter than Toddys

3 – Tadpole

600grms Sloes
300grms Sugar
Couple of Almonds
1.5 litre of Gin

This one will be the hardest of them all, as it needs to be left for 9 months, will power, will power!!!

 

[British Red]

I buck the trend now and add no sugar during the tincture process. Its not as though we are brewing - just infusing.

When the brewing is complete I then add a sugar syrup until I get the required sweetness.

I find this leaves me more "in control"

 

[Toddy]

Hadn't thought about lining the Dexion.....it drips on the stuff at the bottom and it actually soaked the floor in one of the sheds so much that it sagged under the weight of the shelving and contents.
I had to re do the floor with planks

The cheap gin from Lidl's or Aldi's works fine for sloe gin. I tried Tankary, London and Gordon's to compare, and there really is no difference, and it's a fraction of the cost

I tried Gordon's own sloe gin and it wasn't good, it really wasn't

Best of luck with your three, it'll be good to hear how you get on

cheers,
M

 

[British Red]

My shelves are all wood infilled - does save on the condensation

 

[Toddy]

I buck the trend now and add no sugar during the tincture process. Its not as though we are brewing - just infusing.

When the brewing is complete I then add a sugar syrup until I get the required sweetness.

I find this leaves me more "in control"

I wondered about trying that, but then I thought about the sugar desiccation processes for fruits, and I really do want to pull the goodness out of the fruits in the sloe gin or whisky.

Did you find any difference in the taste ? or were the fruits more useable afterwards ? The sloes from my bottles usually end up in the compost heaps, I can't find any taste left in them worth having. That's why I was intrigued with Stu's idea for using them again for cider

cheers,
M

 

[British Red]

I find the fruit pretty flavourless once infused tbh. One of the reasons I now add sugar later is that the alcohol is a solvent. I work on the principle that I want it to work entirely on fruit flavour rather than dissolving sugar. Since I add syrup later, I am simply blending already dissolved sugar.

I work on more intense flavours than many recipes - so equal volumes of fruit and vodka. When I add the syrup later I'm going for less sugar on the damsons and raspberries as I like the taste as is. A bit more to counteract the sourness of sloes.

I'm doing elderberry tincture this year (for health purposes) and plan to try honey to take the edge off that.

Red

 

[johnnytheboy]

BR - what ration of sloes to gin do you use i'll try it your way as well!!

 

[Toddy]

I find that if I pucture the sloes and cover them with sugar, the sugar itself pulls out a fair amount of liquid before the alcohol is added. Not as much as rhubarb or strawberries, but it's still a fair old amount.

Incidentally I sugar dehydrated strawberries from the recent end of Summer glut, and they are really, really good

cheers,
M

 

[British Red]

Sloes I go 2:1 sloe:vodka jtb. Everytthing else 1:1, but I find sloes too strong taste woody. This years batch has two cinnamon sticks, 20 cloves and a couple of tablespoons of dried hibiscus flower in it too - I was feeling frolicsome (and I wasn't going to bother but a navy pilot mate brought me a bagful from "inside the wire" on his base so wth.

He did leave with a thick ear though when he enquired "should I have bothered with the blueberries? We left em for the birds - must have been a couple of hundred pounds of them".

Sigh.

Red

 

[wildjetskier]

Hi there I am new to the forum and would like to say Hi to all. I would like to make my own Sloe Gin and was wondering if it really made a difference whether I used a cheap Gin or expensive. Wouldn't cheap gin give you a cheap hangover. Many thanks, a great forum by the way

 

[Tadpole]

Hi there I am new to the forum and would like to say Hi to all. I would like to make my own Sloe Gin and was wondering if it really made a difference whether I used a cheap Gin or expensive. Wouldn't cheap gin give you a cheap hangover. Many thanks, a great forum by the way

Real gin is a must but cheap gin is ok, I get my gin from Aldi.

 

[wildjetskier]

Real gin is a must but cheap gin is ok, I get my gin from Aldi.

Many thanks Tadpole

 

[ged]

Hi there I am new to the forum and would like to say Hi to all. I would like to make my own Sloe Gin and was wondering if it really made a difference whether I used a cheap Gin or expensive. Wouldn't cheap gin give you a cheap hangover. Many thanks, a great forum by the way

Welcome! My head seems to object to darker beverages. I don't know why. Clear spirits like gin and vodka (Cointreau is one of my favourites) give me no trouble, whether they're cheap or expensive, but dark beer, red wines and some whiskeys give me terrible hangovers. I wouldn't mind about the red wines...

As for making your own sloe gin, I'd have thought it's worth trying several different ways so you can, er, find out what works best for you.

 

[Toddy]

I like Cointreau too
Dharma drizzled it over ice cream for me, it's absolutely lovely

cheers,
M

 

[ged]

I like Cointreau too
Dharma drizzled it over ice cream for me, it's absolutely lovely

So we have something in common after all!

 

[mike 01302]

just found a boat load of sloe bushes looks like a very merry xmas yeehaa

 

[paulnb57]

My Sloe Gin recipe is simplicity itself - I use;

A 1.5 litre lemonade (or similar) bottle
Fill it with Sloes just up to where the bottle starts to curve at the top.
Tighten the lid and chuck it in the freezer overnight. This weakens the skins ( life is too short to ***** sloes with a pin.....)
Remove from the freezer and using a funnel add 15 flat teaspoons of granulated sugar.
Fill the bottle with Gin until it covers the Sloes 75cl fits a treat (keep the Gin bottle)
Shake the bottle once a day for a week to disolve the sugar.
Then leave as long as you can!!
Check if its sweet enough, add more if you wish and shake for a few days to dissolve the sugar I find my amount just right.
Decant back into the Gin bottle
Enjoy!!
If I wait for frost down here they are all gone!!

Paul

 

[johnnytheboy]

I asked the same question on the airgunbbs forum which is about the only other forum with as knowledgeable people as here, someone said to take the used sloes get the stone out, marinte them in cointreau and serve as a desert with a little cream, sounds excellent!!!!!