Absinthe - PLEASE HELP ME!!!!

[HookLine]

If only Bo was here.

[locky83]

theholymackerel,

Have you ever been down under? And when you say the first and second round are on you, you wouldn't be meaning to say that you actually "pay" for alcohol??

[CatharticusX]

On a lighter note, thank you goes out to TheScrin for his recipe. This is the type of help i was talking about. I didn't know that Melissa was Lemon balm, now i know.

Check out Wikipedia. That's what I did.

Seriously, though, the Wormwood Society has some good 1855 recipes that give you a decent recipe as long as you scale it down for your intended run and then modify it as you wish.

For example, for a two-liter run I use 1 oz. Grand Wormwood (absinthium) in the initial maceration, and 1/4 oz. of Petite (pontica). I would prefer to use more Pontica, but it's ten times as expensive as its eccentric cousin.

It is very important to not only use ONLY Petite for the final maceration, but to keep all traces of Grand away from it, including on any utensils or measuring equipment you might use. One freakin' speck of Grand Wormwood will leave an aftertaste.

A double-boiler is ideal because as others have said, it allows you to "steam-filter" the absinthe across without scorching the maceration, which will very definitely taint the flavor.

-cx

[pintoshine]

locky83, once you get all the answers, it will be your turn to answer all these stupid ass questions. I just hope you are ready. Because us old farts are dropping like flies and it will be up to you to educate the next gen, if you know what I mean?

[Victoryrider]

Does anyone know anything about the Green Devil kits? I was thinking that they were cheap, compared to buying herbs separately. I was thinking about buying their refill kit and using it to distill with. Any word on this?

[CatharticusX]

Does anyone know anything about the Green Devil kits? I was thinking that they were cheap, compared to buying herbs separately. I was thinking about buying their refill kit and using it to distill with. Any word on this?

Yeah, in the words of the Terminator, "I have detailed files." I have done this very thing, but the last time I around I opened the bags and examined the herbs:

* They use Grand Wormwood alright. *spit* *cough* Probably an ounce. They don't use any noticeable amount of A. Pontica. I did count a total of approx 4 anise stars in the initial maceration. I also noticed no evidence of Calamus or Angelica, which are good to add.

* They use green food coloring and a small amount of Grand Wormwood (about .2 oz) in the second stage. So, if you distill the bitterness out of it, you're just adding it back in during coloration. Not all of it, though. It's pretty and drinkable, just has the aftertaste.

* The kit costs $30 plus shipping. I was able to recreate one of the 1855ish recipies wormwoodsociety.org for $15, using appropriate amounts of Petite Wormwood. You can get it from CascadeHerbs. (search for it here. They rock, but there MAY be a problem due to recent flooding in their area.)

If you do this you'll need bigger maceration bags; the herbs have about twice as much volume as the Green Devil stuff and if you get them from an herb store, you'll discover they're supposed to be green, not brown.
If you substitute Petite for Grand Wormwood in the initial maceration you'll end up spending about $8 for a 2L run, plus alcohol. BTW, don't waste your money on vodka; use Everclear/ClearSpring if you can get it because vodka is mostly water, and there's no reason to pay for that.

* Distilled Green Devil tastes comparable to LaFee, except for the bitter aftertaste and the lack of substantial louche.

* If you distill Green Devil and use your own herbs for coloration (hyssop, mint, etc) , it's -very- comparable to LaFee, but MAKE SURE you don't use a Green Devil bag for the coloration because the bitterness from the wormwood they use will come out of the bag.

To be honest, mixing, measuring and sampling the ingredients quickly becomes the most interest part of the process. I've had undistilled and distilled GD and if you have it, definately try the first maceration since you already have it, but do your own coloring even if you don't use Petite Wormwood. For your 2L batch, try this:

--1/4 oz hyssop (or less if it's fresh. It'll can give an olive or yellowish tint)
--1/4 crushed mint (or peppermint)
--1/8 lemon balm (melissa)
--a pinch of orange or citron peel
--1/4 oz Petite Wormwood (artemisia pontica) if you can get it from Cascade. At $15/oz it's the most expensive of your herbs. By comparison, Grand Wormwood is about $1.40/oz. Mint will probably be the second most expensive at about $2.50/oz.

In short, you can make it yourself cheaper and better than Green Devil and the only real trick is getting your herbs together. An herb store in your area probably has everything but Pontica INCLUDING A. Absinthium wormwood. I paid about $5 retail for the scale; it's not an exact science.

Cheers!

-cx

[Victoryrider]

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like I want to avoid the GD kit. One thing I'm confused about, you list the price of Grand wormwood as $1.40 an ounce. Cascade wants $10. and ounce, plus shipping. $15.00 for Roman, plus shipping. The recipe listed here calls for a little over 1.5 oz Grand wormwood. At that rate, this looks like an expensive venture! I really appreciate the info!

[CatharticusX]

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like I want to avoid the GD kit. One thing I'm confused about, you list the price of Grand wormwood as $1.40 an ounce. Cascade wants $10. and ounce, plus shipping. $15.00 for Roman, plus shipping. The recipe listed here calls for a little over 1.5 oz Grand wormwood. At that rate, this looks like an expensive venture! I really appreciate the info!

$10/oz seems like a lot. I paid $1.40 from a local herb shop and saw it around for about the same. Dragon Herbarium has it for $1.60/oz. On the other hand, the Cascade stuff might be of substantially higher quality.

Cheers, and good luck!
-cx

[Victoryrider]

Wow! thanks for the link. I've not seen wormwood that cheap anywhere. I've seen it for $10.00 to $15. and oz. It cant' be THATmuch inferior. I'm definitly try it, thanks alot!

[feuerstrum]

Was there ever a consensus on if this was good wormwood or not? If not, anyone have any new good sources? Also, on a run of litre of alcohol, approx how much tails should be collected? Maybe I skimmed over the answer in all the threads I have read, but I don't recollect it.

P.S. This is my first post, I have been lurking a reading for a long while.

[zymos]

If y'all are paying that much for A Absinthum, you need to shop around a bit more!
Try Mountain Rose Herbs-organically grown, $7/ lb.
Or grow your own-it thrives on neglect!

[CatharticusX]

Was there ever a consensus on if this was good wormwood or not? If not, anyone have any new good sources? Also, on a run of litre of alcohol, approx how much tails should be collected? Maybe I skimmed over the answer in all the threads I have read, but I don't recollect it.

P.S. This is my first post, I have been lurking a reading for a long while.

Cascade's pontica is green and good. As for the various a. absinthium, I'm not sure because to determine its quality you probably have to taste it, which would make a dead man gag.

As for the tails, I don't know about other people but it depends on the run. I usually end up with about 100L of tails in a 2L run. When it gets close I start sampling from a teaspoon. You'll know when it's time; it'll change color slightly, but most of all the taste will start to change. At that point you're collecting tails.

I've got a bottle set aside for Mardi Gras at the beginning of February. Woohoo!

-cx

[feuerstrum]

100L? Surely you mean 100mL haha. As far as cascade, I have been referred there several times, but at 15 dollars an OUNCE thats a very expensive venture. I am sure Mountain Herbs is just whole dried plant at 7$ a lb. I am sure cascade would be a good place for Pontica, being as it is used in such small portions. Has anyone used A. a from anywhere other than cascade recently? I don't wanna pay that much only to botch a couple of runs (if I were to decide to do this)

[CatharticusX]

100L? Surely you mean 100mL haha. As far as cascade, I have been referred there several times, but at 15 dollars an OUNCE thats a very expensive venture. I am sure Mountain Herbs is just whole dried plant at 7$ a lb. I am sure cascade would be a good place for Pontica, being as it is used in such small portions. Has anyone used A. a from anywhere other than cascade recently? I don't wanna pay that much only to botch a couple of runs (if I were to decide to do this)

Doh! Thanks for correcting me. I meant 100ml. I get A .a from the "wall of herbs" at a local organic foods store for $1.40/oz, and it's worked great for me. I very strongly doubt there are very many A.a. taste-testers out there who can claim that one is substantially better than the other without gagging vomiting all down the front of themselves first. One place that would probably ship it to use is Dragon Herbarium in Oregon, but I don't know about quality or price. They're reputable otherwise, but probably not quite on par with Cascade.

I agree about spending extra cash for the ingredients; it's better to use lesser quality (to a point) until you get the whole process down, THEN start improving the ingredients.

-zb

[vance71975]

Here is the Simple way to do it.

Run you a Sugar wash, Triple distill it to a neutral spirit, add these packages and let it sit for a month.

http://greendevil.com/absinthe.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The refill Kit is the cheapest way to go on that site.

[CatharticusX]

You have to distill it again after using the Green Devil product or it will taste like wormwood and make all of your friends hate you for asking them to drink it. I learned the hard way in 2005.

By the way, if anybody's going to Burning Man this year, we have a WWI-themed root beer and absinthe saloon on 9:00 @ D. Come introduce yourself. The Green Hour will start half an hour before sunset each day.