Sip, don’t mix

Having spent a fairly long time waiting for your sloe gin to be ready, Joanne recommends that you drink it straight, sipping it from a small glass, rather than mixing it with any other drinks. “If you’ve put the time and effort into making your sloe gin, you want to taste the full extent of the flavour,” she says.

Joanne adds that sloe gin is often drank in the summer too, as people make it into a punch, so if you don’t end up drinking it all over the winter, this is a good way to revitalis it.

Keep your sloe gin at room temperature

“Sloe gin has a warming quality so I don’t like to put mine in the fridge. I much prefer to drink it at room temperature,” Joanne says. The only reason you may want to put it into the fridge is if you do decide to add it to a cocktail or mix it.

Use your berries to make jam

Instead of binning the sloe berries when you have filtered the liquid, Joanne suggests saving them to make jam. “Having sloe gin and sloe berry jam in your cupboard is lovely over Christmas and they also make a great gift together,” she says.

How to make delicious sloe gin from scratch, according to a master distiller