On the Road Again!

A success. Claire's first attempt at uniting gin and fruit is a total success. Last week she separated the fruit from the liquid and sieved it. It is a dark red colour. Tonight we had the first small glass. Exceptional. Tastes very nice.

After a remarkable 11 years since we last put gin to sloe, Claire took over this time and started a new batch. This time we are without the luxury of Gilbey's finest gin and have once again delved into Aldi and their oddly named Oliver Cromwell Gin.  I am not all that sure the Puritan would have been a great drinker, but it seems whilst they liked a pure life, the odd spot of booze was acceptable. There is some debate on whether the berries are sloes or actually damsons. I had a look back through the blog to see when we last made some, and the following link was the result: https://invictamoto.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/sloe-sloe-quick-quick-sloe.html In the cupboard we still have a few bottles.   Nearly 3/4 of the Gilbey's, and about half a bottle of  a 2008 brew that was given to me by Chris Spencer, a former colleague at Islington. We even have a little of Claire's Dad's version from 2006!   And how does it taste?  It has aged pretty well. Of...

Just a few days short of 4 months in the bottle I have decanted the sloe gin from the berries and into clean bottles. Ready to drink I didn't have any filter paper to hand tonight, so instead simply poured the liquid off using a kitchen sieve to catch the berries and part of berries. In the end the liquid contents came to a full Gilbey's bottle and an inch or so left over in the other bottle. I even squashed the berries to extract as much of the liquid as possible. Of course, after the photo I had to have a small taste, for medicinal purposes only, of course. Lovely. Needs a bit more time until it is as smooth as the other bottle that Claire's Dad made three years ago and that we have only a little of. I'm especially fond of the Gilbey's bottle as for 3 years in the late 80's and upto December 1991 I worked for Grand Metropolitan in Harlow, in what was the former IDV computer centre. Across the road were the huge bonded warehouses and in the...

Tonight's spare time job was to start off a batch of sloe gin. The first litre using a Gilbey's Gin bottle and the second a habitat jar with a Grolsch type top. Sloes out of the freezer The Gilbey's bottle got 1/2 litre of gin and 150g of sugar, then the bottle (litre size) is packed almost to the top with sloe's that were collected at the weekend. Leaving enough room for a daily agitation for a week. Filling the bottles The other bottle got a half-litre of Aldi Gin, 150g of sugar and then it was filled to the top with sloes, again leaving enough room to agitate. According to the recipes you are supposed to wait until after the first frost, but the trees are begging you to harvest now and many are so soft the break as soon as you pluck them. You can simulate first-frost by bunging them in the freezer. In the end we collected almost 2lbs of sloes and used about 1.5lbs to fill the bottles. Now we have to agitate the bottles daily...