Recipe is to make a 1 litre bottle of sloe gin; adjust the ingredients depending on your needs!

Ingredients

• Half a litre of gin (needn’t be high quality)
• Enough sloes to fill the other half litre
• 150g-250g caster sugar, depending on taste

Equipment

• Decanter with lid, or 1 litre bottle with airtight sealed lid (with enough room in neck to push through sloes)
• Fork or Pin

Method

1. Sterilise your bottles. Important!

2. This next bit is the most arduous. You’ll need to prick each individual sloe a few times with a sterilised needle, a cocktail stick or a cutlery fork. Be prepared for mess and lots of sloe juice. Once you’ve pricked through the skin of each sloe, plop it in the gin bottle. Do this until you’ve filled half the litre bottle. If like me, you’re a bit impatient, you could freeze the sloes and bash with a hammer or rolling pin.

3. Add sugar. 150g for sweetness, 250g+ for teeth rottingly sweet (but tasty) beverage.

4.  Fill the rest of the bottle with your gin.

5. Seal the bottle and then give a good shake. Store in a cool, dry place. You’ll need to shake your fermenting sloe gin about once a day for the first week of fermentation. Then it’s just once a week for the remaining 8-10 weeks.

6. After 8-12 weeks, open, decant and enjoy the rosy glow. And remember, if you prefer to leave your sloes in the bottle, you’ve got around 6 months to finish your bottle of homebrewed sloe gin! If you opted for gin without sloes, you’ve got considerably longer.

Enjoy. I certainly will! 

Regards Malcolm.