My best Absinthe so far...

All about absinthe

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sparky marky
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by sparky marky »

esxman wrote:To Kiwi Bruce from esxman
certainly am going to macerate and redistill .First I need to get some of the more unusual seeds to get the actual plants before I start .Btw watched a Nat Geo documentary a year or so back , they showed an American lab guy in France reviving the lost art of absinthe making .He has a very old copper still , and all his ingredients were in whole plant form , hung up to dry , I suppose either to not dilute the primary alcohol , or to bring out flavours .He bottles the stuff and markets it . First I think I need to grow my angelica and hyssop etc first .I just got some a amylase from Uk , so first ventrue will be a stab at a cornflake or rolled oat whiskey, while I am waiting from my plants to grow !
Dried herbs lose their green grassy flavour which is a good thing. I dry all my herbs for a couple of weeks. If you're in the U.K. Artemisia absinthium grows very easily and happily, as does Pontica, lemon balm...
Iv had less good luck with hyssop and Angelica. But that might be because I'm a novice in the garden.
I have fennel too but obviously growing enough anise and fennel would be difficult....

Whatever you do, it's a super rewarding hobby. It was my birthday yesterday and my wife bought me a bottle of jade terminus. Iv still got a ways to go before I'm quite on THAT level lol
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kiwi Bruce
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by kiwi Bruce »

sparky marky wrote: bottle of jade terminus. Iv still got a ways to go before I'm quite on THAT level lol
Don't kid yourself...just take it one step at a time...each new addition/new experiment, will bring you another step closer to where the "BIG BOYS" play. Keep good notes, include tasting notes...but above all remember the "BIG BOYS" started at the same place we have to...with generalized and vague hundred year old treatises that don't include any tasting information at all. The guys that restarted Pernod fils found this out. They claimed to have been working from an old recipe they had found, however when their brew was compared to a rare bottle from 1905 it was way off, lacking the citrus and coriander flavors of the original...so we get to call bull shi# on that, they had to go back to the drawing board on that one. That friends, is exactly where we are after a hundred years, back to the drawing board. My consolation in all of this is...there were 90 plus absinthe distilleries in Pontarlier alone, in the 1880's and there were 25 towns in Switzerland and France making just Absinthe. How many different tasting Absinthes where there ? It had to number in the hundreds. So...if your a little conservative in your recipe construction, by that I mean...I don't think that there was a chipotle flavored Absinthe, (but that could just be me) you could be very close to one of the hundreds of Absinthes made a century ago. There is no way to tell. I think the count is up to 40 plus herbs that could be used in conjunction with the trinity, and hardly any distiller used more than five or six. One of the few tasting comments I've seen about an American Absinthe was about Dempsey's of Boston...they said it tasted "spicier" than the French Absinthes they were used to...Well what the hell does that mean ? Spicy, what...like pumpkin pie ?

My goal in the pursuit of Absinthe excellence is to make a drink that I find amazing...and of course...share the recipe here.
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kiwi Bruce
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by kiwi Bruce »

Excuse the rant...Happy Birthday Sparky Marky.
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skow69
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by skow69 »

esxman wrote: they showed an American lab guy in France reviving the lost art of absinthe making
Sounds like Ted Breau, who eventually authored the Jade line, which he now produces in partnership with Distillery Combier of Saumur, France. The story (as I heard it) goes that Breau was an American professional chemist and avid absintheur. His first offering was Lucid, which, along with Keubler, was the first commercial absinthe available in the US, and instrumental in introducing the beverage here. Contrary to popular belief, there never was an official ban in America, but it disappeared due to lack of availability caused by the ban in the rest of the world. Breau moved to France where samples of the pre-ban product were available, and set about chemically analysing some of them in order to reverse engineer the recipies.

I would like to see that documentary. I will have to look for it.
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I'm not an absinthe snob, I'm The Absinthe Nazi. "NO ABSINTHE FOR YOU!"
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alf
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by alf »

I do not know if you know the manual Lebeaud of the 19th century, but I use it as a work reference for some of my recipes ...
It can be consulted here: http://oldu.ispeed.org/docs/1_Artisanat ... .Roret.pdf
For absinthe, page 234 of the pdf (221 in the book).
I can try to translate this part, if google trad is not enough ;)
Last edited by alf on Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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kiwi Bruce
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by kiwi Bruce »

alf... thank you for that, now to try to get a handle on what it says ! This should be interesting !
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NZChris
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by NZChris »

Thanks for that, alf.
I have been thinking about trying to make an Absinthe based liqueur. I've used page 235 (222) to write up a protocol for making myself a version of his Absinthe Cream liqueur. The only thing I'm missing is the peppermint.
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alf
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by alf »

there is a lot of recipes... like if you enter "ice cube recipe" on google, 1 060 000 results ;)

another book on it? http://www.museeabsinthe.com/Fritsch-French.pdf
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kiwi Bruce
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by kiwi Bruce »

And again thanking you...another great book I've never seen before.
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NZChris
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by NZChris »

I spent some time today translating and scaling some of the recipes to suit my mini still. There are some ideas that are new to me that I might try.
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alf
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by alf »

I use a micro still too, for gin, absinthe, blueberry and other little things.
These old books give recipes with volumes too big for me too, lol.
I was able to read (and observe) that the heating time is very important in the nature of the esters collected, and that the same product distilled in a large pot and a small one do not have the same final taste.
With my 3.5 liter pot I keep warm (50-65 ° C) for two hours or more before going to the boil. This helps a little to improve the complexity ...
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NZChris
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by NZChris »

I let my 1300ml still take over an hour to produce the first drip. Total time with heat on until the last of the keeper product is 4 1/2 hours.

At the end, I've been adding 200ml of water to the boiler and collecting 200ml of flavorful distillate and oils to add to the next run.

I've only recently realised that the spent coloring herbs can be added to the next run, so I'll be saving them in future.
sparky marky
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Re: My best Absinthe so far...

Post by sparky marky »

I have a glass jar of tails from the last run that also has all the colouring herbs soaking in it.
Gonna toss the whole lot into the still for the next batch.

Only problem with absinthe is that it takes me so long to get through a bottle I don't get a chance to make it that often. I currently have about 10 liters at 70% from the last three batches I made, can I REALLY justify making more???
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