For the first year since we’ve been here, the damson trees around the garden, are absolutely laden with fruit. Maybe they have been in previous years, too, and possibly we’ve been too busy with summer visitors and renovation work, to notice, but we’ve definitely noticed this year. The bees and butterflies are in abundance, buzzing around the trees and tucking into the fallen fruits. We even have a rabbit who visits and seems to almost get intoxicated on the fruit. The trees (middle in photo below) are heavy with them and the thud of falling fruit is a familiar sound this summer. We’ve been picking and cleaning the damsons for a couple of weeks now and freezing them – and after a supermarket run to buy some cheap gin, we’ve started making the damson gin…

Today has been the perfect day, as after days and days of sunshine and high temperatures, a storm rolled in, so we had a day indoors. As we’ve never fruit trees before, I’ve never made any kind of gin, assuming it to be very difficult. Well, not so!

A litre bottle of fairly cheap gin (wasn’t going to use the good stuff) was divided between two sterilised kilner jars. 500g of our frozen damsons were bashed up a bit with a mallet, in the freezer bag, and 250g added to the gin in each jar. 125g of golden caster sugar was then added and both jars given a good old shake. This’ll be repeated daily for a week, until the sugar has dissolved and then the jars will be put it in a cool, dark place and left for 2-3 months.The plan then will be to use a coffee filter cone, to hopefully achieved a refined gin, and the liquid will be strained through it. This will then be decanted into clean, dry bottles, which will be sealed and labeled. By Christmas, we hope the gin will be ready to drink 🙂 Meanwhile, I’m just liking checking on my first attempt at gin distillery…