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How to make sloe gin sous vide

by Great British Chefs4 November 2015

How to make sloe gin sous vide

Sloe gin is a traditional English drink made by infusing sloe berries into gin. This method normally takes up to a year to properly infuse but with the help of sous vide, this process can be speeded up to less than a day. Making it sous vide means you can heat the alcohol enough so that the berries infuse but not high enough to diminish the alcohol.

Ingredients

Metric

Imperial

  • 1l gin, London dry, good quality
  • 500g of sloe berries
  • 100g of caster sugar
1
Preheat the water bath to 70°C
2
Put the sloes, sugar and gin into a vacuum bag and seal. Make sure the sealer is on a low setting because there is a lot of liquid in the bag
3
Place the bag in the preheated water bath to cook for 3 hours
4
Remove from the water bath and leave to cool in the bag
5
Pass through a fine sieve into a clean bottle and store in the fridge or cool, dark cupboard

Tip

The gin can be drunk straight away but it gets better with time – it’s best to forget about it for a year or so!

Variations

This method will work for most fruits and berries; try blackberries, raspberries, damsons or blackcurrants.

For extra flavour you could also add herbs to the sloes such as rosemary or thyme.

Uses

Sloe gin is wonderful by itself just served over ice but is also great in cocktails. Vivek Singh’s Blackthorn sour mixes sloe gin with pineapple compote for a tropical flavour. James MacKenzie uses sloe gin as part of his tempting Chocolate, juniper and sloe gin pudding with damson ripple ice cream and Emily Watkins uses it for a red onion and sloe gin marmalade.

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