Sloes [and pig damsons]

Newly-collected sloes

It’s been a particularly bad year for sloes this year – in England I’ve have seen so few it hasn’t even been worth getting out a carrier bag to collect them – but we found two spots in France that had some, so the last time we were there we collected three bags full.  I spent hours washing and drying the berries, before stuffing them all in the freezer.  I didn’t have time to make sloe gin when we were there, and thought I’d rather do it when we next go back, than do it all in a rush.  Also my back was massively aching from all that sloe-washing and desperately trying to get the garden weed-free…

Some big, some little ones

There were some absolute whoppers, but sadly they don't seem very strongly flavoured.

The downside of that is that I’ve got masses of work in store for me on our next visit!

I love the blue-black colour while they still have the bloom intact

I plan to do a cost breakdown [so have been saving the time spent (several hours already, and not a bottle of alcohol has been opened!) and adding in the cost of the diesel in my book], which I think will be very interesting, and I suspect will prove that commercially-available sloe gins are a bargain.

Taste-testing proves, though, that home-made offerings are worth that time and effort!

My next great plan is a side-by-side comparison of liqueurs made with:
•    Gin
•    Vodka
•    Alcool pour fruits [grain alcohol, we think]
•    Whisky
•    Rum
•    Anything else I can think of [port, sherry, maybe]!

Hopefully, photos of the bocaux soon…

I've also got a couple of bags of pig damsons in the freezer to deal with, so I'm going to have one busy day with cold, purple fingers coming up...

Pig damsons