I took the above photo on 1st September last year. They are ripe sloes - small bitter blue plums. Last weekend our visitors, Ed and Jo, enjoyed the occasional glass of sloe gin, and I promised to let them have the recipe. I'm putting it on blog because it may be of general interest. I was given the basic remedy several years ago by an old friend who lived in Lavenham and made the best sloe gin I ever tasted. I'd originally intended to give his remedy verbatim, but it takes a bit of understanding, and I've altered (and, I hope, improved it a bit, over the years). Certainly I've made it easier to do. In the past we've always tried to pick sloes after the first frost (which was thought to improve the taste) ; then we washed them, and pricked each individual sloe with a silver fork (it had to be silver according to my Lavenham friend) as any base metal tool tainted the gin. Now, however, we pick the sloes when they are ripe (with a blue bloom on their skins), wash them, and put them (in a plastic bag) in the freezer. This means that they've had a frost on them, and it also means that when we take them out of the freezer and thaw them, the skins are cracked and there is no need for the pricking the skins business.
Recipe for Sloe Gin:-
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You will need large glass containers. I use three large, ex sweet shop jars. Obviously - wash them out well first. We pick five to seven pounds of sloes.
We fill each jar about a third full with ripe sloes. Then pour on enough Dry London Gin to cover the sloes (in practice just over a litre).
Put in about eight to ten ounces of white granulated sugar - (this can be adjusted upward later -after two or three months- when doing a quality control test /sampling a little for sweetness -to your own taste) .
Then put in eight cloves (I pound these up a bit in a stone mortar first). Then put in eight blanched almonds. I then screw the jar top on tightly. Every so often- about once a fortnight- give the gin a good stir with a wooden spoon. About six months later (usually about June time, and only then if the sweetnes is about to your taste) strain carefully (through muslin) and bottle the resulting gin. As it is popular stuff in the family I've bottled it in half bottles this last few years. Don't drink it before Christmas as it really does improve with age (but often doesn't get the chance). If you can keep some for three or four years or so you will appreciate the difference. It's the best winter warmer I know.
Your Exceeding Good Health !
Mike.
P.s. Treat it as a liqueur. It's more potent than it looks or tastes.
6 comments:
I have to recommend the sloe gin to all readers and tell them that this stuff is GOOOOOOD stuff - and as Mike mentions, VERY potent - I have only had a small glass this evening and my typing is fester and more accirate than usual - am going to have another glish and then write that nuvel I hovv ben plonnmin fo somouyghn
night night x x x Stig
Thanks Mike for your compulsive habit of pickling sloes in gin and bottling the liquor. I recall one year an early frost had blighted the sloe blossom and there was a national shortage of sloes in the Autumn. Being apprised of the tragic news that there would be no sloe gin the following year I took it upon myself to scour the local commons as I suspected there might be a sheltered micro-climate in one of the dells. I found a few blackthorn sapplings with fruit and managed to supply sufficient sloes for your annual brewing, brewed some myself, and sold the excess sloes to great profit. Since which time I have put down a few batches regularly. Presently there are 12 pints mellowing on the fruit in three batches. The oldest was made with brown sugar and is looking very dark and rich, the next batch is to your recipe with white sugar and the last batch, made with Demarerra sugar, has a pinkish-amber hue and is already smooth and delicate enough to tempt saints and angels to indulge in the demon drink! Thanks again for showing me the way.
A fellow sloe gin maker was telling me a while back that he uses pounded up barley sugar (as in the old-fashioned sweets) in his sloe gin which, he said, gave it a very individual and pleasant taste. I found this interesting enough to make a note of it in last year's diary, but haven't, as yet, done anything more positive than that about it.
I think you will find Barley sugar is named after the barley-twist design found in furniture legs because of the traditional shape of the sweets.
They contain no extracts of barley, just the usual food flavourings according to a traditional American cook-book.
It might be simpler just to flavour granulated sugar with the flavouring of choice before adding to the sloe gin rather than undoing the confectioner's art in a mortar.
The Candy Cook Book (1917)
By Alice Bradley
CHAPTER VIII HARD CANDIES
Brittle boiled-sweets like butterscotch, barley sugar, peppermint-sticks, brittles and nougats, are cooked to 290° F. or up to 330° F.
They should be thin and very brittle when finished.Sugar-candies boiled to a high temperature and pulled must be
handled with canvas gloves, in front of a warm oven or batch
warmer. Much experience is required to successfully manipulate the syrup used in making Christmas and stick candies, and it will hardly
pay the home candy maker to attempt them.
Barley Sugar Drops
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
food colouring
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Flavoring extract
Put sugar and water in saucepan, stir until dissolved, add coloring if
desired, cover, and boil three minutes. Remove cover, add cream of tartar, and boil to 300° F., or until it just begins to change color. Add a few drops of flavoring - peppermint, lemon, or orange extract - and drop at once on tin sheet from tip of spoon, in portions the size of a silver half dollar. Store in a tight glass jar.
Barley Sugar Sticks
Prepare candy as directed in Barley Sugar Drops. Pour on tin sheet in strips four inches long and three fourths inch wide. Take up one at a time, twist, and place in covered glass jars.
Excellent - thanks Uncle Mike!
"Cheersh..."
Morning - I blogged today !!!
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