A few weeks ago the Rye News 2016 sloe gin competition was announced and when, a few days later, one of the directors of the paper appeared at an editorial conference with a bag full of sloes, I decided it was time to have a go at this.
In the spirit of the competition, I am not going to divulge all the ingredients that are going into my brew, but armed with the basics of sloes, sugar and gin, I spent an entertaining hour on Google recipe-hunting. It seems there are a hundred and one different ways to make this, but, being a newbie, I have chosen one that I thought looked fairly simple (and did not advocate using the best Bombay Gin at £26 a bottle).
I seem to have a plethora of wine bottles (sadly mostly empty) in the house, and so having sterilised two of them, got started. First problem was the discovery that wine bottles are designed to make it easy to get wine out and definitely not to get slippery crushed sloes in. Memo to self: next year use something like a kilner jar – much more practical. Next came the sugar – one third in the bottle and two thirds over the kitchen floor (see memo to self, above). Having gathered up the sugar (doubtless along with a few stray breadcrumbs, dust and general kitchen floor detritus – it’ll all add flavour), persuaded it into the bottles and added the gin, it was looking good. (Actually it wasn’t looking good at all, more like bottled Rother river water on a bad day. But I have convinced myself that it should look like that). All that remained was to screw on the caps, give it a good shake and pop the bottles in an under-stairs cupboard to be religiously turned every day or so for the next couple of months.
The next question was what to do with the gin left over. With 007 wall to wall in the Kino this week, there was really only one answer to that. Shaken, not stirred, of course.
Photos: John Minter
Image Credits: John Minter .