Sloe wine

Out and about foraging again and this weekend we planned to gather Sloes, we have loads and loads where we live so are never in short supply after picking quite a few we gave them a good wash and stuck them in our big pan and added water and brought to just boiling heat and turned the heat off and left over night.

Bringing the fruit up to just boiling temperature makes the fruit super soft and ready for a good old mash to release all the flavours.  It has the most amazing bright red colour and smell like sour fruit but a nice sour. 

Ali then put the thick mashed up goo into his fermenting bucket and made an awful mess all over the kitchen floor, with the bright red goo it looked like there had been a murder, and there would have been if he had not cleaned up.  Ali add enough sugar until the hydrometer says its a boozy drink, he then adds 1tsp of yeast per gallon and left to ferment for a good week. later this will be decanted into demijohns and then later much later into bottles.

We also went foraging last year for sloes and are making sloe wine and it takes ages it is very slow sloe wine indeed, 2 years to make and probably 2 days to drink hehe. So far it has been 1 year in the brewing and ever 6 months Ali gets it out ad checks it, gives it a filter and a taste which is a must, and we both huddle round the bottle sniffing, slurping and swooshing the liqueur  round in our mouths and comparing how it has changed flavour since the last time we tried it.  Ali finally got to bottle it so no more tasting till its ready, 1 more year on Christmas 2012 where we look forward to quaffing it, how nice to have a warming rich wine to look forward to it even sounds Christmasy