Beetroot leaves

Normally found in hedgerows, particularly where animals are farmed.

You half fill a bottle with sloes, which you have pricked all over with a needle. Add some sugar and fill the bottle with gin (or vodka). Put the cap back on and give it a shake once a day for 7 days, then once a week. This helps the sugar dissolve and also mixes the sloes with the gin.

Done now it will just about be ready to drink at Christmas - beautiful very dark red colour. You can add more sugar later if it isn't sweet enough.

Can do the same with damsons.
 
Margaid, how much sugar do you add & what size/type of bottle do you use?
 
The recipe I think I used is equal quantity of sugar and fruit. For sloe gin you can use any bottle with a screw cap I save the empty gin bottles. For damson gin, because I have a number of damson trees I use demijohns, but any wide mouthed jar will do. You just need to be able to get the fruit into the bottle/jar fairly easily.

Ideally you should keep it 3 months before drinking. If you can make enough try and keep some for 3 or 4 months and see how it compares. The recommendation is not to leave thd fruit in for more than 6 months.

The first Christmas I made Damson gin, I poured the liquor into a small bottle (again anything with a screw cap will do) and we ate the gin soaked damsons with cream for pudding. When I tried it again the next year the damsons were not very good - I think it depends on how ripe and sweet they are to start with.

If you don't like very sweet things then cut down the sugar, particularly with the damsons. You can always add more when you bottle it.
 
I've always used this recipe - 1 pint (glass) of sloes, 1 pint of gin, 1/2 pint of sugar.

Stick the whole lot in a large kilner jar or something similar & shake it once a day up to christmas. Strain it into bottles, get last years batch out of the garage & put this years batch in it's place.

Hic!
 
Yup, that's the way to do it.

There are loads of recipes on Google - I have at least 3 different ones in different books. BabyBantam's would easily be sweet enough for damsons, and like I said earlier you can always ADD more sugar - you can't take it out if it's too sweet.

Ummm - got a bit far from Beetroot leaves haven't we?
 
Not sure about sloes, but one of my girls is partial to a little cider = eats as many rotting windfalls as she can, then snoozes in the veranda LoL
 

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