I made sloe gin again last year, starting with a similar recipe to the one I used earlier. I froze the sloes first which helps to split the skins and softens the fruit, which helps extract the flavour. After a few weeks in the freezer I put the sloes and sugar in a pan and warmed them through before putting everything in a jug.

When it came to straining the sloes, there was a lot more sediment than normal. I ended up with one bottle of clear sloe gin and one bottle of alcoholic sloe smoothie, which will probably work well with a mixer or fruit juice. The sloe gin was quite sweet so I poured some more gin on the sloes, without any sugar, to extract a bit more flavour. I gave this a few weeks then strained it and blended it with the first bottle. The end result was quite good but was more work than the old method.

I won't bother warming the sloes again. It results in too much sediment and is more hard work in the end, I'll stick to just freezing then infusing in gin.