Blackberries

Don't get me going on fruit with meat!!

Each to his own of course but why would anyone wish to consume their pudding with main course?

As for the person who thought it a wheeze to stick pineapple between gammon and egg .......

K
 
Looks like it will be a bumper harvest down here too.........we picked a few pounds at the weekend so had blackberry and rhubarb crumble for the last 3 nights, but it is early days, most of them are still small and red.
 
I guess you mean the whisky rather than the summer puddings:

1lb blackberries - making sure that they represent a good mixture of the sweet and the tart.
1 bottle of the cheapest whisky money can buy (this year - Aldi at £10.50/bottle, if I remember rightly)
3-4oz sugar, depending on sweetness or otherwise of the blackberries. I tend towards less sugar on the grounds that I can always add a little more before bottling if the stuff is too tart. You can't, however, conveniently take it out if the stuff is too sweet.

Add all together (I put 4x the above in a demijohn), invert gently a few times over a few hours to dissolve the sugar. Put in the cellar and forget until at least the start of the hinds.
Filter through folded jelly-bags in a funnel, and then through a nylon coffee-filter (if you can be arsed). Taste and add more sugar, if that seems desirable, a teaspoon at a time.

Hey presto! Bottled late summer sunshine against raw freezing larder-ends of days at the hinds.

Ooops - I almost forget: once you've bottled the resulting liquid, the fruit goes into the freezer so that 4-6oz can be added to increase the octane-rating of winter apple crumbles etc. Alternatively, get someone who can bake to incorporate them into a sweet flat spongy cake of he sort that is served at elevensis on shoots. And more: add the boozy brambles (and this is something I can make myself) to baked semolina.

If there are any left by the next summer, they can be mixed with fresh blackberries to make similarly high-octane summer puddings, served with that rather good vanilla-flavoured live joghurt that all the Bolshevieks and social workers round here are talking about.
 
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that would be great with vodka too instead of the whisky I bet!

Yes, and cheap vodka is cheaper than cheap whisky. So are cheap gin and brandy.

The sloes here are not looking particularly good, and if the damsons are not numerous enough to make damson gin, some blackberry vodka might be a substitute.
 
I guess you mean the whisky rather than the summer puddings:

1lb blackberries - making sure that they represent a good mixture of the sweet and the tart.
1 bottle of the cheapest whisky money can buy (this year - Aldi at £10.50/bottle, if I remember rightly)
3-4oz sugar, depending on sweetness or otherwise of the blackberries. I tend towards less sugar on the grounds that I can always add a little more before bottling if the stuff is too tart. You can't, however, conveniently take it out if the stuff is too sweet.

Add all together (I put 4x the above in a demijohn), invert gently a few times over a few hours to dissolve the sugar. Put in the cellar and forget until at least the start of the hinds.
Filter through folded jelly-bags in a funnel, and then through a nylon coffee-filter (if you can be arsed). Taste and add more sugar, if that seems desirable, a teaspoon at a time.

Hey presto! Bottled late summer sunshine against raw freezing larder-ends of days at the hinds.

Ooops - I almost forget: once you've bottled the resulting liquid, the fruit goes into the freezer so that 4-6oz can be added to increase the octane-rating of winter apple crumbles etc. Alternatively, get someone who can bake to incorporate them into a sweet flat spongy cake of he sort that is served at elevensis on shoots. And more: add the boozy brambles (and this is something I can make myself) to baked semolina.

If there are any left by the next summer, they can be mixed with fresh blackberries to make similarly high-octane summer puddings, served with that rather good vanilla-flavoured live joghurt that all the Bolshevieks and social workers round here are talking about.

You'd be the man to go hind stalking with!

Thanks for making the thread more interesting.

K
 
The introduced European (UK?) blackberry is a serious problem in Australia..this is the land of the berry bush if you like. 8.8 H is over 21 million acres under bb here.Some single infestations might be a patch 1/2 a mile square and 8' high. Sambar deer thrive on it and walk through the biggest bushes with impunity.


  1. [h=3]Management of invasive European blackberry | CSIRO[/h]www.csiro.au › HomeSafeguarding Australia




    Blackberry infests about 8.8 million hectares of temperate Australia and biological control remains the only viable management option for many infestations.

 
The introduced European (UK?) blackberry is a serious problem in Australia..this is the land of the berry bush if you like. 8.8 H is over 21 million acres under bb here.Some single infestations might be a patch 1/2 a mile square and 8' high. Sambar deer thrive on it and walk through the biggest bushes with impunity.


  1. Management of invasive European blackberry | CSIRO

    www.csiro.au › HomeSafeguarding Australia





    Blackberry infests about 8.8 million hectares of temperate Australia and biological control remains the only viable management option for many infestations.

Best get out there and start picking!

Cheers

K
 
I have enough trouble stopping the damned the damned things from taking over my garden, I imagine that ripping the things out of all of Australia is a bit of a Herculean task. Maybe you could try introducing some other alien species that eat the plants? That sort of approach usually seems to work just fine with no negative consequences at all.
 
They have been using introduced 'rust' it works to a degree but the Aussie climate is perfect for the b/berry and its in places that no one go`s to if anyone has.
Getting along the creek bed in summer in a drier year means you can pick the fruit hanging over where the water was...buckets galore in some years.I have seen berry`s as big as 1/2 a mans thumb in the best years.....talk about spraying the bowl purple ha ha!
 
I used to like blackberries.














But now prefer i-Phone

Actually the blackberries around the lakes are doing very well this year.
​I have picked plenty, but they never seem to make it home :lol:

​Neil. :)
 
I guess you mean the whisky rather than the summer puddings:

1lb blackberries - making sure that they represent a good mixture of the sweet and the tart.
1 bottle of the cheapest whisky money can buy (this year - Aldi at £10.50/bottle, if I remember rightly)
3-4oz sugar, depending on sweetness or otherwise of the blackberries. I tend towards less sugar on the grounds that I can always add a little more before bottling if the stuff is too tart. You can't, however, conveniently take it out if the stuff is too sweet.

Add all together (I put 4x the above in a demijohn), invert gently a few times over a few hours to dissolve the sugar. Put in the cellar and forget until at least the start of the hinds.
Filter through folded jelly-bags in a funnel, and then through a nylon coffee-filter (if you can be arsed). Taste and add more sugar, if that seems desirable, a teaspoon at a time.

Hey presto! Bottled late summer sunshine against raw freezing larder-ends of days at the hinds.

Ooops - I almost forget: once you've bottled the resulting liquid, the fruit goes into the freezer so that 4-6oz can be added to increase the octane-rating of winter apple crumbles etc. Alternatively, get someone who can bake to incorporate them into a sweet flat spongy cake of he sort that is served at elevensis on shoots. And more: add the boozy brambles (and this is something I can make myself) to baked semolina.

If there are any left by the next summer, they can be mixed with fresh blackberries to make similarly high-octane summer puddings, served with that rather good vanilla-flavoured live joghurt that all the Bolshevieks and social workers round here are talking about.

I hope this will taste good. Made some today and still loads left on the bushes. Out of interest does it thicken up and taste like a liquor. I was thinking of adding a bottle of drambuie to the 3 whiskey. What ya reckon. Going to make vodka next week.
 
I hope this will taste good. Made some today and still loads left on the bushes. Out of interest does it thicken up and taste like a liquor. I was thinking of adding a bottle of drambuie to the 3 whiskey. What ya reckon. Going to make vodka next week.

I hope you like it. It thickens a bit, and I think it is with gunk from the riper blackberries, some of which disintegrate. However, that stuff seems to cause cloudiness, and my obsessive filtering-regimen removes a good deal of it. I might filter some a bit less this year: it will certainly save a load of arsing-about, and might have an improved mouth-feel.

However, I think the main source of thickness in proper liqueurs is produced by high sugar content, as found in the sloe gin of those who use 8oz (or more!) sugar per 70cl gin. It's all a matter of personal preference, but my preference is for less sweet - hence my sloe gin tends not to exceed 5-6oz/bottle, and my suggested initial 3-4oz/bottle for the brambles results in a similarly less-liqueur-like product. These formulae should in my opinion be adjusted according to taste!

As to the Drambuie idea, it is an interesting one. However, if I wanted a more liqueur-like bramble whisky I think I'd just add more sugar and perhaps deliberately pick riper brambles to use. I might be accused of being miserly, but if I liked Drambuie I'd consider such use a waste of Drambuie: as it is, I'd just consider it a waste of money.:)
As the man said, de gustibus non est disputandum, and if you decide to go Drambuie I'll be interested to know how it turns out.

P.S. Drambuie is itself whisky, honey and some other stuff the nature of which is widely-discussed on the interweb. Might be best to make some of that yourself using cheepo whisky, especially if its just going into the bramble whisky!
 
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