Making sloe gin for the first time this week, with the sloes I picked a few weeks ago, conjured up memories of making elderflower cordial for the first time: no two sloe gin recipes are the same. The quantity of sugar to sloes recommended varies from equal measures to half measures to none depending on who you ask. I chose half measures of sugar to sloes calculating this would be the best combination for filling the gap between the berries and booze in my enormous 1.7ltr cognac bottle (no, I’m not a booze hound – I fished it out of my neighbours unlidded recycling box!)
Bottle 1
650g sloes + 325g sugar + 850ml gin (in a 1.7l bottle)
Bottle 2
200g sloes + a vanilla pod + 150ml (in a 375ml bottle)
This article recommended using a vanilla pod instead of sugar to miraculously sweeten the sour sloes and produce a less syrupy liquer. I’d bought a small bottle of gin as well for gifting when the time comes to decant it and liked the idea of experimenting with a sugar free variety of sloe gin. 
Bottle 3
200g frozen raspberries + vanilla pod + 125ml gin (in a 250ml bottle)
I had no use for the last 125ml of gin so poked around in the freezer to see what other fruit could be used to replace the sloes. My stoned damsons would have worked really well but I was quite taken by the idea of a raspberry red tipple.
And just 4 days later this is how they’re looking.
note to self: made on 10/11/09. Freezing sloes is supposed to help the skins to burst but most of the berries are still intact despite vigorous shaking. Patient pricking instead of freezing next year then? And keep some gin aside for topping up bottles once the gin/fruit/sugar settles.
Nip it in the bud 
sloes and sloe gin are a mystery to me but those bottles look so pretty
Another good recipe is blackberry brandy, 1lb blackberries, 8 oz sugar, 1 3/4 pints brandy.
No need to pierce the blackberries and follow the same method as for sloe gin. Cheers!
Nic,
Mmm I can almost taste the sloe gin.
For now I will have to settle for my rhubarb; rasberry and strawberry vodka and I still have a number of bottles of elderflower champagne in the shed – so its not all bad eh.
Claires blackberry brandy recipe sounds good.
Hi Mangocheeks,
Your rhubarb, rapberry and strawberry vodkas sound gorgeous, could I please have the recipies? I’d like to try them next year when I shall have fruit on my plants for the first time, whoop whoop! (I’m new to this gardening malarky, only started this summer)
Thanks,
Claire
Hi Claire, here’s the link to Mangocheeks ‘fruit vodka’ post. Let us all know how you get on :o)
http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.com/2009/07/fruit-flavoured-vodkas.html
Oh wow, they look great! I want to make some and I don’t drink!!! Maybe I’ll have a go just to say I did it, come in handy at Christmas.
Mmmm, good looking booze … (the raspberry bottle looks divine !)
Note to self: Find a way to be present at bottle opening(s). This looks too good to miss.
Johanna – they were to me until a few weeks ago. Just as well my friend Deb knew what they looked like when we went hunting for them!
Claire – hic, that sounds soooo delicious and I have blackberries in the freezer (I don’t actually drink much really but fruity sippy drinks at Christmas time appeal – probably doesn’t take as long to brew as stone fruit).
MC – elderflower champagne sounds gorgeous, I shall remember that for next year. When’s the party :o3
Ann – it’s fun making it even if you don’t drink it. My friend Deb is 8 months pregnant and got a terrible look for the checkout girl when she bought her gin!
Miss M – if you find a way to be present at the bottle opening you can have the entire bottle for your efforts :o)
Kirsten – I thought that too – they’re like blueberries but the size of black currants. Totally sour and inedible raw though unlike beautiful blueberries. I’d like to get a blueberry bush but they’re so expensive and difficult to keep growing
I remember as a child I used to go along the cliff path near my home where there were lots of sloes growing and I used to eat them sometimes even though they made my mouth go fort of furry, they were so bitter. No one in my family ever made sloe gin but yours looks delicious.
Wow, I love those photos. They look like works of art. I have never tried to make anything like this before, but you have taken the fear out of it for me.
I picked my sloes about a month ago and put them in the freezer to simulate frost! To be honest I don’t think it makes much difference at all when you pick them or what you do with them. I certainly won’t be pricking each one individually with a pin !! I
I think you can add as much sugar or as little sugar as you like depending on how sweet you like your finished product. I’ve also made blueberry gin and blackberry gin in the same way!
Just found your blog – it’s great and I shall be back. I’m also of the “don’t bother pricking the individual sloes” school. Mine has always turned out to be very tasty, though I do leave the sloes in for a year. Usually use 1/3 gin, 1/3 sloes, 1/3 sugar.
Loved the look of the raspberries – hadn’t thought about doing that. Have tried redcurrents in vodka though this year, so waiting with interest to see what that will be like. Blackcurrents are also very good with vodka.
Anne – a furry mouth is an apt description. I tried one and it was really bitter. Glad it conjured up nostalgic memories of home for you.
Jac – it’s so quick and easy and the daily shake is quite comic :o)
Matron – one recipe recommended weekly testing for sweetness but I can’t imagine there’d be much left if I did that! Your other varieties of gin sound scrummy
Choclette – thanks for coming and joining us. Redcurrant vodka is one to try next year – we had lots of redcurrants from our neighbours plot and made gorgeous redcurrant jelly. Good to here the sloe gin improves the longer you leave it as I didn’t expect mine to be ready for this christmas so may just lose it to the back of the cupboard!
Oh wow! I’m impressed!! I might try it!! Thanks for sharing x
thanks for popping over. There are some lovely recommendations here for other fruit to try and it seems that vodka + any fruit you can imagine works well too!
I made my sloe gin 3 months ago and have just tasted it and it is sooooooo bitter, my tongue just curls around. Not nice at all. Is there anyway that I can get rid of some of the sloe bitter taste. I have added a sugar syrup mix to it and it is slightly better, but not very palatable. If I can’t alter the taste, what can I mix it with to soften it down. I hope I have not wasted that litre of gin!
Hi Sue, I’ve just sampled mine and it’s not tasting that special either! I think I’m going to have a go at stabbing all the sloes inside the bottle with a knitting needle because they don’t appear to have burst very much. The gin should be more syrupy than it is and it just tastes of gin at the moment! The sugary one is ok but the one without sugar probably tastes like yours (so the jury is still out on whether a vanilla pod is a suitable substitute – you can taste the vanilla through the bitterness though which is quite nice). So hard to say how to fix it. Perhaps try asking on the Sloebiz forum – the people on their seem to know a thing or too about making delicious drinks.
Hey, I would live to know how the sugar free sloe gin turned out as I am trying to steer clear of sugar. Thanks. X
Hi,
My last year’s sloe gin was a total failure. Never did get any better than the first time that I tasted it – very, very bitter and I decided that I would not waste anymore good bottles of gin making this again. The sloes were obviously not ripe enough, or something? But, too expensive to keep trying and failing, so will just stick to my gin and tonics in future, at least I know what this is going to taste like.
Hi Sue, mine’s a little bitter too but as I’m not a fan of gin it’s still an improvement as far as I’m concerned!
I’m thinking of taking a knitting needle to mine as the gin doesn’t seem to have penetrated the sloes as much as it should have. I’d definitely prick them if I made it again – no matter how long that takes! The raspberry one’s good though. hic…
Hi Jade, my sloe gin didn’t go as syrupy as I would have liked because contrary to popular opinion about sloes bursting naturally when frozen they didn’t seem too! I would say that both versions still have a touch of the sour gin about them and that the sugared one is not all that much sweeter. The one without sugar does have a lovely vanillary hint to it and the one with raspberries + vanilla pod seems sweeter than the sugared sloe one. As I’m not a big fan of gin I’d be inclined to copy Mangocheeks experiments with vodka and make sugar free liquors using naturally sweeter fruits.
Hope that muddle is helpful, N
Hi Nic, thanks for all your advice on here. My sloes seem to have a white fur on them in the bottle – is this ok or should I worry?
Hi Andy
White fur on soft fruit is never good I’m afraid. It’s a sign of mould growth which means bacteria is present. I’ve experienced this at the top of jams if the jars have not been sterilized properly or the lids aren’t an airtight fit. I’ve heard it can also happen if the ingredients have cooled down too much before bottling.
As your fruit is in alcohol and boiling doesn’t apply I’d guess your sloes were over ripe or you had a few bruised ones which could have been harbouring bacteria. It’s probably been feeding nicely on the sugar added.
I don’t honestly know if this means your gin is completely spoiled or whether it’s salvagable if you remove the mouldy culprits. I happily scoop mould off the top of sweet preserves but in liquid I would guess it’s harder to be sure you’ve got it all. Perhaps you could pose the question on the Sloe Biz forum?
well your comments make a lot of sense – I did think the sloes were quite ripe when I picked them but it was fairly early in the picking season and everyone says dont pick til ripe.
I’m not sure what to do, I would have to decant the whole thing which given the bottles I’m making it in would be nigh on impossible to remove the culprits. Can bacteria grow in alcohol, well it seems like it.
Its not a dense fur, its more like strands coming off the top few sloes. I’ve added a post on the other forum you mention but noone has answered yet.
***UPDATE***
Well, after the first appearences of the strnage looking stuff no more has developed, most of the sloes look fine and the whispy stuff sits on top of the berries, the liquor itself looks clear enough. I was thinking about this and the the berries were very ripe when I picked them and after freezing them I wonder whether its some of the insides of the berries rather than anything malicious!
thanks for the update Andy. If your gin is looking fine your thoughts on the berries splurging sounds plausible. So it should be ready for you in time for Christmas :o) Enjoy x
made some more this weekend and watched the berries closely, the ripe berries seem to have split even more than last year through the freezing process and a little bit of pulp seems to come out of each one, so am going to assume everything is ok with the brew!!!
yay, I’m pleased to hear it. You did well foraging two batches of sloes. Don’t tell anyone where they are!
actually very easy, when we moved into our new house 10 years ago, the builder planted a Blackthorn hedge, cursed him at the time but I’m glad he did it now!! Have made sloe rum as well this year.
that’ll be quite some Christmas party then Andy ;o)
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reading a blog post today about making sloe gin has reminded me of my sloe gin experiment. The moral of my story is single pricking each sloe would seem to be worth the effort if you want a lovely silky rich syrupy drink. I ended up throwing mine away as it never really thickened up and I don’t like gin enough to tolerate the disappointing fruit flavour from unburst sloes.
As for the vanilla pod no sugar version, that must be an urban legend too! The raspberry’s worked fine but I won’t be making it again (I’m just not a drinker) much prefer raspberry vinegar!
I took the time last year to prick each sloe, I also added 1star annise to the mix…..it worked really well, have just picked this year’s slows and look forward to another batch
thanks for taking the time to share your successful experience Andrea, further confirmation if any were needed that short cuts never work! Hope this year’s batch turns out as well.
ps. I have a jar of star annises in the cupboard, bought from an asian grocery store for less than one would cost. And yet I’ve never used them for anything other than one chutney recipe years ago. Thanks for the reminder to dig them out!
I’m not sure what berry a sloe is and I don’t think we have them here. But can you use blueberry’s?
Hi Linda, sloe gin is a very particular flavour which is weird considering they are inedible and tart raw! Perhaps that’s why they work well with the gin which personally I don’t like much. They have no natural sweetness in themselves, that comes purely from the sugar (don’t try the no sugar version, it was horrible!). Using blueberries would no doubt work since most fruit soaked in alcohol and sugar will produce some sort of pallatable fruity syrup and would be similar to my experiment with the raspberries. I’d probably say go for vodka though instead of gin as it’s a more neutral liquid and I’ve a friend who’s experimented with all sorts of fruit vodka and been happy with the results http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/fruit-flavoured-vodkas.html
How was the raspberry and vanilla gin please!!?
Not very nice! Just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. The vanilla did nothing to sweeten it and the raspberries weren’t sweet enough to do the job of making it syruppy
I got carried away and made gooseberry gin, it is a little odd and I won’t do it again, I did also make raspberry gin with some mint, this wasn’t to bad.
I love your experimenting! I’ve never made any kind of fruit gin again either ;0/