Time to make some Sloe Gin

Well, It's a pretty lousy day today with rain pouring down and generally miserable so no work outside for me today.

I picked a load of Sloe berries early in the Autumn and have had them in the freezer ever since waiting for me to get around to using them. Although It's not essential, it is a good idea to freeze them first of all, this is to rupture the fruit to let the liquid seep out, I tend to prick them as well to get the maximum effect.

Making Sloe gin is fairly easy and there are many recipes and old wives tales on how it should be made however this is how I make it and I've never had a failure yet!

I use a 1.5lt Kilner jar and fill it to about a third full of sloes then add about half the quantity of caster sugar then fill the jar to the very top with gin. Vodka and Brandy can also be used as alternatives and make a very nice liqueur.

You need to keep shaking the jar for a few days until the sugar is fully dissolved then put the jar away in a dark place for at least 3 months.

Strain the juice through muslin to just leave the liqueur before drinking......Hmmm Lovely!

  

Re-Roofing, disposing of old asbestos/cement slates

Asbestos/cement slates have actually got quite a low quantity of asbestos in them but I always knew it wasn't going to be cheap disposing of them after I renewed my roof.

To help others here are so cost comparisons I did to find the cheapest means.

I rang up 3 skip companies for quotes and also my local council. First of all, I needed to know the weight? as I had bought 600 slates for renewal it seemed obvious that I must have taken off the equivalent, so by weighing one of them and multiplying by 600 I came up with an approximate weight of 750 kgs or about 3/4 of a ton.

The first company that I telephoned gave me what I thought was a ridiculous price of over £2000, although they did advise me to go elsewhere for a quote and gave me the name of another firm.

I rang the other firm who gave me a price of around £750 however they did need me to double bag them all in heavy-duty plastic.

I rang a third company that would let me just put them in a skip without bagging them up and they quoted me £825.

All of these quotes were more than I was expecting so I finally rang my local council who told me that, first of all, I would need to get from them an asbestos permit and that all the slates would need to be double-bagged in addition I would need to transport them myself to the local recycling centre. They said they would allow me 60kgs free of charge and everything over would be charged at 36p per kg.
So a possible cost of around £250. Although I will have to double bag the slates and get them to the recycling centre this the option I am taking. It also means I can do it in my own time.

AS you can see there are some huge differences in the costs so it pays to ring around for quotes.

Here is a photo of the finished job after my re-roofing plus an old photo of the bungalow taken from Google street view how it looked before I started all the work.