St. Amand, patron saint of booze

Today I discovered a new Saint, St Amand. St Amand was born in what-is-now-France in the sixth century and spent most of his life as a missionary in what-is-now-Belgium. There was a famous monastery dedicated to him at St-Amand-les-Eaux near Tournai in Belgium. This monastery was attacked by vikings in 883, which is how I came to be reading about St. Amand this morning.

The reason I decided to write about him is that St. Amand turns out to be the patron saint of all those involved in the production and trade of wine and beer, which I thought made him an appropriate saint for all those of a self-sufficient bent, much like Saint Perpetua. Rather amusingly, St. Amand is also the patron saint of Boy Scouts, although I confess that I am not entirely sure what the link is here. In case anyone is interested in honouring his feast day with the copious consumption of his favourite beverages, it falls on the 6th February, conveniently just before Lent (I imagine the Boy Scouts are optional).

The other reasons I decided to write about St. Amand is that firstly, I am a bit too busy with vikings today to write a proper blog post, and secondly, it gives me an excuse to post another picture of a medieval manuscript. Not that I need a great deal of excuse.

Straining the elderberry schnapps

As promised, I managed to strain the first batch of elderberry schnapps at the weekend, and I am now pleased to say that I have a lovely 700ml of dark, clear berry schnapps goodness neatly labelled (neatly labelled! again!) and sitting on the alcohol shelf. Provisional taste testing was promising, although not as extensive as I would have liked since not only does the recipe advise that it be left to age for a minimum of two months, but my tolerance of vodka is pretty low at noon on Sundays. The teaspoonful or so that I did try suggested that it is pretty well infused with a soft elderberry flavour, yet still with a good kick of vodka lying underneath. Updates on how it ages will be forthcoming in due course.

For anyone who hasn't tried straining very small berries out of a rather narrow-necked bottled before, I have to say that the arrangement of sieve, muslin square and clothes pegs depicted above was absolutely invaluable, as was a skewer to winkle out the last of the berries. I also had great fun washing out the muslin square afterwards - every time I rinsed it out I would open my hand to reveal shade after shade of first dark purple, then violent and lavender, before a beautiful pale blue finally refused to get any paler.

The only question left is what I do with the tupperware container-full of extremely alcoholic elderberries sitting in my fridge. I'm thinking a vodka-elderberry-and-apple pie, but alternative suggestions will be gratefully received.

Elderberry Schnapps

Those with an eagle eye or two may recall a post written a few weeks ago about the gathering of elderberries, in which I alluded to their future as elderberry schnapps the very next day. I’ve been meaning to reveal what actually happened to these berries ever since, but sloes and mini-breaks rather got in the way. Finally, the fate of the elderberries is revealed!

Despite what I promised earlier, I didn’t actually make the schnapps the day after the berries were gathered. After checking that great schnapps resource Danish Schnapps Recipes, I realised that they were supposed to stay in the freezer for a week rather than just overnight in order to temper the slightly bitter taste. In the interested of continuing experimentation with the brewing of odd liqueurs, coupled with my decided taste for the sour and bitter, I decided to leave half in for a week and half for 48 hours. The results will appear in the form of a taste trial in due course.

While the elderberries rested awhile in the freezer, I took myself off to Sainsburies to acquire hefty amounts of booze to match my large haul of berries. My slightly puritanical eyebrow raising at the fact that they include vodka in their el cheapo ‘bare essentials’ range was coupled with irritation that they didn’t make said vodka in one litre bottles. On reflection, being forced to buy slightly more expensive supermarket vodka was probably a good thing, and I'm sure my brain cells with thank me for it in due course.

The recipe used for the schnapps is simple:

- 800ml of elderberries
- Around half a litre of vodka

Place berries in a one-litre bottle and top up with the voddie. This should sit for about four weeks, with occasional shaking. The plan is then to strain the fruit after four weeks and leave the resulting brew to age for a couple of months, or until it seems like a good idea to drink it. I'll probably strain at least one bottle this weekend, so I'll let you know what the results are like. I'm most interested to see how much it still tastes like vodka, since I'm not actually a huge fan of vodka, but if the results are disappointing I suppose I can either leave to it age for a while, or alternatively add some syrup and make it into a liqueur.

What next? Space on the booze shelf permitting, I'm quite keen to try making hawthorn liqueur. I've always thought it a shame that hawthorn berries come in such profusion every autumn yet cannot be used for very much. Unless you are a blackbird.

Sloe gin

A pleasingly large amount of my Bank Holiday Monday was spent making sloe gin. Now I have three satisfyingly large bottles sitting on the alcohol shelf in my kitchen and I am feeling well on the way to becoming a suitably self-sufficient soak. I am taking it as a propitious sign that this was made exactly four months to the day before Christmas and therefore should be ready and tasty in time for seasonal celebrations. Well, to be strictly honest, it would have been made four months to the day before Christmas if I weren’t spending Christmas in Cape Town with K’s family (the carbon emissions! the guilt! the sunshine!), since thanks to a German mother her family traditions dictate that Christmas is actually held on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. As if the confusion caused by the seasons being the wrong way round wasn’t bad enough!* Still, I imagine the sloe gin will help with the said confusion. “If you can get it through customs”, my future mother-in-law helpfully said.

I’ve never made sloe gin before, so this is all rather much in the way of experimentation. I have already discovered from a small amount of post factum research that August is traditionally regarded as a bit early to pick sloes for gin, and that ideally one should wait for first frosts (which could be any time now, if the general August weather is anything to go by) or until 1st September at least. I live and learn. It will not be the first time that I have drunk some rather strange alcohol in the process. To be honest, the likelihood of us having a free Sunday in September with equally nice weather to go tramping along dykes is already looking a bit slim, and even if we had found such a weekend, it surely wouldn’t have been as much fun as out walk with this weekend, nor would there have been so many hands to get covered with thorns and scratches. If by some chance another such Sunday does turn up, I’ll just have to make another bottle.

The Cottage Smallholder seems to have become my online sloe gin guru, so following her advice, my basic recipe was as follows:

1lb of sloes (or thereabouts)
1 empty litre gin bottle
4 ounces of castor sugar
1 tsp of almond essence
Enough gin to fill the bottle

There does, however, seem to be some dispute what one should do with these ingredients. Should the sloes go in the freezer? Is it better to leave sugar and sloes alone for a week to get to know each other better and add the gin later? I have accordingly made three subtly different batches.

- One ‘basic’ recipe. Sloes were pricked, creating much sticky mess and placed in the bottle. Sugar was added, gin poured on top and finally the almond essence sneaked in at the last moment. The whole lot given a good shake and left until further notice, aside from further shaking to ensure that all the sugar has dissolved.

- One ‘sugar first’ recipe. Sloes pricked and sugar added as above, but then the resulting sticky mess left to sit before the gin is added so that the sugar can draw out the juice from the sloes, which I might add it is doing admirably. I’m not entirely sure when I should add the gin though – any tips?

- One recipe à la sloes gelés. These sloes are still in the freezer.

The bottles have been labelled accordingly (with uncharacteristic care), so I hope I will be able to make a suitable judgement as to the best method around December. Providing, of course, that I stay sober long enough to write a blog entry afterwards.

*For any Southern hemisphereans out there, I know this can be a touchy subject. I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that you have every right to have summer in December, and to associate Christmas with hot sunshine, sunburn and barbecues rather than cold, overcast skies, snows, and roaring open fires. Still, you have to admit that continuing to put snow and robins on your Christmas cards is little bit weird.