Home Distiller

If you're using a reflux still for the base alcohol, it won't matter particularly, unless you deliberately allow some of character through. So: whatever is cheapest, if you're making neutral alcohol, and if it'll have some flavour, whatever you prefer. There are some absinthes made using alcohol fro...

I think vajravarahi is stepping it up a gear. . .

I wouldn't macerate with a heat source. Just seal the herb and alcohol mixture in your still or enamelled bucket and leave it for around 24 hours. You may want to use less than 1100ml of alcohol if you only have a 2L still: If you were to add the same quantity of water again before distilling, then ...

If you know exactly what it is denatured with and are sure it won't leave a residue, then there's nothing stopping you in theory. Stranger things have happened than people accidentally confusing bottles from different runs though.

I'd keep it well away from anything to do with the still.

Just do a cleaning run with water or water and rye flour followed by washing out with water. If it's a pot still, that is.

I would recommend anything from this site: http://www.absintheonline.com/acatalog/Absinthe.html

Try any of the Jade absinthes, Verte de Fougerolles, Brut d'Alambic, Eichelberger, any of the La Bleue absinthes, Doubs Mystique or Roquette. Just pick one!

If you're in the US, Cascade herbs have pretty much everything. Apparently it is good, but I've never ordered from them so I can't say personally.

Spoon feeding: The best thing for absinthe is a simple pot still. Macerate your herbs for 24 hours in the alcohol, add the same amount of water, put everything in the still and distill until you have the same quantity of distillate withdrawn as the quantity of alcohol you put in. If you want to make...

Isn't it from ageing in wooden barrels?

Don't worry about removing the heads. As for tails, either you can learn how to work out where to stop, or stop after you have collected roughly the same volume of spirit as alcohol that you put in. In Duplais, the recipe for absinthe fine says to use 51 litres of 85% alcohol and to withdraw 50 litr...

Sounds unlikely really. Why would they get upset, anyway?

Here's a more detailed version with a diagram:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

As Home Distiller says, glass can be cleaned and reused which is much better environmentally than recycling after a single use. When the bottles are no longer in good enough condition to be cleaned and reused they can be recycled. The melted glass is usually of high quality and can be used to make b...

I thought I had replied before, but obviously not! The problem I can see with distillation like that is that you could extract components from the raw materials which you don't necessarily want in your drink. (I have no personal experience of steam distillation though.) There are recipes for making ...

The recipes listed on the sites Zman has linked will make something good, and are not necessarily any more complicated than the ones you have posted in this thread. The website you got the recipes from is essentially an advertising site pretending to be a useful resource.

The recipes in old books which call for dilution with extra alcohol are lesser (although still good) absinthes. If you are going to make absinthe at home then you might as well go for the better recipes.

http://www.oxygenee.com/absinthe/books4

It's because we've all discovered a much better way of doing things: Put some star anise, fennel bulbs and wormwood leaves in a food processor with some grappa and then filter it through a sieve. Tastes like Pernod Fils from 1910.

No doubt William's pears!

Forget that recipe and use one of the other ones mentioned before.

http://www.livre-rare-book.com/cgi-bin/lrbcgi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Search there for "FRITSCH J. et E. Guillemin"

If you can read French, there is a book on fermenting sugar beet and jerusalem artichoke:

FRITSCH J. et E. Guillemin,

Culture et distillation de la betterave et du topinambour d'après les procédés les plus nouveaux,

Paris, 1889

The shells might have some of the smell.

That's the masculine ordinal, not the degree sign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollowº

Green anise is the same as anise, which is not the same as star anise. If you are using any star anise; use the whole pod, seeds, husk et al.

*Are all of the herb quantities in the recipe (except, obviously, seeds) for fresh (not dried)? All dried. *Which are seeds? I'd guess the coriander and fennel are, but the angelica or the green anise I'm not so sure of. I have some regular anise seeds - is 'green' just to differentiate from 'star'...

Good luck. It might be best if you forget the Erowid recipe altogether. If you don't fancy the old recipes from those books, perhaps try Verte Ego's recipe:

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 68#6702268

You can leave the herbs in while you distill, as long as you don't do everything too fast and burn them, or carry on for too long and boil it dry.

The recipe doesn't look bad, apart from the thing about soaking for a week, and the colouring step, which would render it undrinkable. I'd suggest distilling as soon as possible. Collect as much volume of liquid for drinking as the alcohol you put in at the beginning. If you put in the 800ml suggest...

Can you post your recipe here? Unfortunately there's a lot of rubbish on erowid.

When making absinthe you only need to macerate the herbs for around 24 hours before distilling. . .