Sloe Gin for teh Win!
Update (Sep 2010): You may have arrived here by asking Mr Google “how to recognise sloes”. It appears I didn’t give an answer here, sorry. The easiest way to describe them is by the skin.
- The skin is dark blue/purple/black with a greyish patina which makes sloes look like blueberries or tiny, tiny plums.
- Sloes occur in clumps on the branches, unless you’ve been beaten to the plant by another sloe-hunter.
- The leaves are small and oval-shaped, and interspersed with long thorns.
- Look along the hedge as you walk and you’ll start to recognise different types of foliage. When you see a sloe bush, snap a twig off and take it with you on your search for more sloes.
- Remember to take a few carrier bags with you, and remember sloe juice stains. Pick more than you think you need, since approximately a quarter of them will get chucked at the sorting stage.
- Don’t forget to find a good pub nearby where you can feel smug and warm after your harvest. Brakspear Bitter works best.
Good luck
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Several years ago I read a very good book by Ian Marchant called “The Longest Crawl”. One the stops in it that caught my attention was the Plymouth Gin distillery and on a visit in 2006 I got my first taste of sloe gin on their excellent tour. I was a convert on the spot. Winter warmers don’t come much better than this. Sadly, the only sloe gin generally available in UK shops is Gordon’s, which isn’t quite up to snuff. What we did have, though, was bottles of plain Plymouth Gin, and swathes of Oxfordshire countryside in which we could find a blackthorn bush or two.
This was our first year making sloe gin and checking around the internet it seems that people are keen to share their advice on how to make sloe gin, but not on where to find sloes. Everyone has their closely guarded secret spot. As it turns out, so do we now. (Not too far from Chalgrove. That’s all I’m going to say.)
The nicest thing I found about making sloe gin is the way it brings you closer to the land you’re living in. In your quest for the sloes you learn the life cycle of the plant, how to recognise it from the leaves, fruit and habitats, and you get out there and search for it, looking more closely at plants than you’ve done since being a kid. Unless you’re a horticulturist, of course. For someone who spends 80% of his waking hours looking at a computer it’s hard to describe how liberating it feels to do something that involves rummaging around in the bushes and getting away from the daft machines.
“Why don’t you… just switch off your television set and go out and do something less boring instead?” as they used to say in the summer holidays.
The next bit is also fun. You get to make stuff in the kitchen instead of buying it from the shops. Provenance is a popular theme at the moment and you can’t get much closer than picking them yourself and pricking each one of the buggers with a needle. Might as well make a special occasion of it and have a glass or two of wine. Or last year’s sloe gin. You’re not going to be sneakily eating the sloes, that’s for sure.
I won’t go into lots of detail here about how to make it, there’s plenty of places you can find on the interwebs about that, but this is the stuff you’ll need:
Chuck it in the Kilner Jar (or cheapo equivalent where the lid won’t seal properly and you have to double up with the seal from the teabag tin, making the teabags slightly less fresh than they should be) and pour loads of sugar over it:
At this point I’m meant to have a photo of the jar filled up with gin, but you get the idea. We’re turning it daily and watching it develop into tasty sloe gin, maybe even in time for Christmas. It’s making something yourself. AND it’s booze. And it’s not the sort that might cause blindness. Win!
