Home Distiller

kiwi Bruce wrote:Hi Skow69 This is a part of the intro and conclusion. I'm only on the second re-write, a ways to go yet.
"A little history. The French wine industry was dead, it started to die around the time of the American civil war, and by the early 1870’s it was gone, killed by an aphid, Phylloxera, that poisoned the grape rootstock. People have got to drink something and the French, rich and poor, turned to Absinthe. By the turn of the century the French were drinking thirty six million liters of Absinthe a year!
The wealthiest men of the world owned the grand wine estates of France, they still do. They found a cure for their dead vineyards, the aphid does not kill grape vines from America. So the fine French vines were grafted onto American rootstock, and soon wine began to be produced in great quality and quantity again. But it had been nearly a century since the wine industry flourished it France. The French didn't want to drink wine anymore. So these wealthy men spent ten years and tens of millions of Franks turning public opinion against Absinthe. They succeeded of course, and Absinthe was banned."
My problem has been making a beverage that tastes close to what was made a century ago. I thought that a Pastis, as Jimbo rightly called it, was the benchmark. I even got my paws on a bottle of Spanish and a half bottle of Romanian Abs.

You mean Vintage or current COs?

Everything I've made following the Treatises was no where close to what I expected. I would describe them as light. with a subtle Aniseed flavor and a depth of low under flavors. So I gave up for a while. Then last week a got an e-mail from an English outfit that is cold distilling Abs.

"cold distilling absinthe?" What does that mean?

They were given a sample of Pernod-Fils from 1910, to build their recipe from. Low and behold, their tasting notes are just like mine.

Tasting notes on the 1910?

They are selling small samples - 10 mls- for $10

Samples of the Pernod-Fils 1910 or their product?

I'll order mine next week. So, very encouraged, today I'm soaking my herbs, tomorrow I cook. Keep you posted. Kiwi

So you're going to post your recipe, right?

I hope you don't mind all the questions. I am truly interested in what you're saying and I want to understand.

Back to the recipe notes. Remember the recipe?

Quantities are in grams per 1 liter. It scales up fine.
A. a. [unstripped] --- 25
Anise ---------------- 140
Fennel --------------- 100
Coriander ------------- 10
Calimus ---------------- 3
Angelica --------------- 7
Chamomile ------------ 4
Genepi ----------------- 2
Mint ------------------- 10
Cardamom ------------- 3
Carraway ---------------3
Costmary -------------- 3

Colorators
A. pontica ------------- 3
Hyssup ----------------- 2
Lemon Balm ----------- 3
Veronica ---------------- 1
mint -------------------- 1

I gave up stripping the grand wormwood cuz it tears the hell out of my hands, and I found an old picture of somebody in Pontarlier loading a boiler with a bundle of four foot long stocks. They say most of the flavor is in the leaves and flowers so i bumped up the quantity to compensate.

For next time: I might drop the genepi. Just don't think it needs it. Save it for a blanche. There might be too much of a nutty flavor from the coriander I think maybe.

I usually strip the leaves and flowers from everything but the A. a, but I'm not religious about it. If not stripped I bump it some. I usually try to grind, chop, or crush the seeds as much as possible, even got an herb chopper, but it's not terribly effective. Fennel seeds are hard as rock.

I don't macerate any more, couldn't tell that it made a difference. I think the heat liberates the oils and flavors. I put the herbs in the boiler and add enough warm water to wet them. That is supposed to make them relax and open up so they don't close down from shock of the high test alcohol. Then add a liter of 85% clean neutral. No heads in absinthe! There are many reports that a grape based neutral is preferred, but most of us will be using a sugar base. You might make a small heads cut if your neutral is suspect. Add a liter of tails from the last batch and a liter of fresh water. The oils we're after are hydrophobic, lots of water to chase them out, and this mixture brings the product out at about 68 - 70%. You won't have tails for the first batch so don't get discouraged if it is rather thin and bland and doesn't louche well. Soldier on and know that subsequent batches will be better. The tails are full of oils and flavors that add complexity and nuance.

Run it in a potstill. Heat slowly, stir, or do whatever is necessary to avoid burning the herbs. If they scorch you're screwed. A bain marie takes a lot of the worry out of it. My solution is vacuum, but nobody else does that so it is not essential. I start to boil around 108f and finish around 135f. No worries about scorching. Run it low and slow and keep it steady, no surges, no lurches. Some people discard the first ounce or so. I don't think it's necessary if your neutral was clean.

Collect the first 250 ml and set aside for coloring. Then collect another 750 ml and change vessels. You now have a liter of perfumed spirit. Now collect another liter of tails and save it for the next run. The tails will louche somewhere along the way. It's always a good show because they are so rich with oils. Those tails are golden. They are key to good absinthe.

Strip the coloring herbs and add them to the first quarter of the collection in a jar that you can heat in a pot of water. Put something under the jar to keep it off the bottom of the pot. Heat to 135f, take the jar out and let it cool. Filter and mix back in with the rest of your perfumed spirit. You should now have about a liter of swiss verte at around 70% ABV. It is traditional to bottle at 68%.

There is reason to believe that some absinthes in the belle epoche were aged in oak barrels. With one notable exception, that process has been totally abandoned. Most modern COs rest for 6 months or so in stainless tanks. You will be amazed at how much your absinthe will change in the first few days. 6 weeks of rest will improve it immensely. A few months ago I found a bottle that had been hidden behind some stuff in a closet. It was 15 months old. I swear that was some of the best absinthe I have ever tasted. I looked up my original notes and found that it came from a batch that I didn't like very much when it was new. It convinced me that aging is worthwhile and filled me with conflict. Staying out of it is the hardest part. I have the best intentions but I'm weaker than Canadian hot sauce.

Good luck. Have fun.
skow

Are you using them fresh out of the garden? Dried?

All dried. I keep threatening to grow wormwood and pontica but haven't gotten around to it yet.

skow69 wrote:

sweeps wrote:I don't believe you can make great absinthe with regular store bought wormwood.

You mean the stuff that looks like it went through a chipper and you'd have to do DNA analysis to tell what plant it came from?

Yeah, that's the stuff. Also, it's usually brown. Dried wormwood shouldn't be brown, it should be silvery grey. And you're right about the aroma - it shouldn't just be bitter, it should have that bright aromatic top note that you can only get by harvesting it at the right time.

We had a brutal winter and lost about half the plants in our container garden. Thankfully though, the wormwood, genipi and pontica are thriving and the wormwood is almost ready to harvest. Stripping it is rough on your hands, but worth it.

NZChris wrote:I occasionally pluck a leaf and chew it. It makes a nice tea too. Sometimes I put some in my ginger beer to give it some bite.

I make wormwood mead from time to time. Last time I made it, I added a bit of ginger root and it was spectacular.

I don't have worms

I once picked up giardia from a crappy water supply. Fixed it in a couple of weeks with wormwood.

LOL!! A little side note... If you need a quick way to dry herbs for coloring, Place them between two paper towels on a dinner plate and micro-wave them in 30 second increments, until they are dry. They lose most of their aroma and are only useful for coloring. Kiwi

sweeps wrote:container garden.... wormwood, genipi and pontica

You have my attention. May I ask:
1. How much space do you dedicate to these? I gather you grow enough to keep yourself in green booze.
2. Wormwood-- what about varieties or sub-species? I have used A. a from Virginia and from Montana. I think I can tell a difference between them, although I'm not sure I would bet on myself in a blind test. I wish I could get a sample of the legendary Pontarlier wormwood for comparison. Did you start your crop from seeds or domesticated local plants or ? Did you seek out a particular variety or buy from a trusted source? Do you think I'm making too much of it?
3. How do you use the genepi? Like I said, I'm unsure about it.
4. Pontica is supposed to be extremely difficult to propogate. Did you start from seeds, rysomes, or ?

I hope you don't mind. Some people think I'm obsessed with absinthe. I have a feeling you might understand.

Will you post a recipe?

sweeps wrote:I make wormwood mead from time to time. Last time I made it, I added a bit of ginger root and it was spectacular.

When do you put the wormwood in? Before, or after, the ferment?

I'm not obsessed with absinthe specifically, but I am obsessed with herbs in general, so yes, I do understand.

1 - The soil was terrible at our last place, so we went over to container growing most things. This had the advantage that when we had to move, the plants came with us. Currently, most things are in 5 gallon plastic buckets. Not sure, but we have maybe 200 of them, but a lot of them are curently growing weeds after their former inhabitants died in the aforementioned brutal winter. A single 5 gallon bucket has mostly supplied me with enough wormwood for my needs, exccept for that case of giardia where I had to buy some extra. Even though I ordered from a good supplier, I couldn't believe the difference between the stuff I bought compared with the stuff that I grew. I'll probably divide the wormwood into two buckets this year, as it's starting to look a bit rootbound.

2 - The wormwood that I have was grown from seed. I forget where I ordered it and I didn't go looking for a particular variety. I'm sure subspecies makes a difference, but it's not something I've got into. I also expect that two plants from the same subspecies might be noticeably different, depending on how they are grown. Even the same plant could vary from year to year depending on variations in growing temperature, daylight hours, etc. How obessed do you want to get? I think the most important thing, though, is harvesting at the right time. I've also not experimented with different anise and fennel varieties - I'm sure that also makes difference.

3 - I don't generally use genipi in absinthe, although I did try the Duplais recipe for white abs a while back and the additional herbal notes were very pleasant.

4 - Both the pontica and the genipi were bought as established plants. I've tried starting genipi from seed, but have not had much success yet. I don't recall ever seeing pontica seed for sale.

As for recipes, my standard abs is the basic Montpelier. Per liter:

25g wormwood
60g anise
40g fennel
10g coriander
5g angelica (seed rather than root).

I usually bottle at about 72% and I like to include a little bit of veronica in the coloring step. Sadly, I lost my hyssop, lemon balm and veronica over winter, but I still have some stock of dried herbs to tide me over.

NZChris wrote:

sweeps wrote:I make wormwood mead from time to time. Last time I made it, I added a bit of ginger root and it was spectacular.

When do you put the wormwood in? Before, or after, the ferment?

Before. I basically make a wormwood tea, let it cool a little, then strain it over the honey. The bitterness of the wormwood and the sweetness of the honey is a great combination.

Thanks for the info.
Sorry to hear about all the winter kill. Good luck with recovery/replacement.

Thanks. I suppose it could have been worse, but some of the losses were really disappointing. I'd got two real healthy artemisia valesiaca plants and was curious if that could be used like genipi. Turns out there are not as hardy as genipi, but that was one of the worst winters anyone around here remembers.

The wormwood is really close to being ready to harvest. When I get it processed, I'll let you know how much dried herb I got from it, if you're interested.

200 buckets of herbs! Sounds like obsession to me. I've been trying to imagine what it must be like to walk into your greenhouse. I get sensory overload just from the idea. Even if they are outside it must be wonderfully fragrant in season. Heartbreaking to think of losing half of that, you must have spent years collecting them. But I see the dilema. You could hardly bring 200 buckets inside. What a nightmare.

Yes, please sign me up, if you have any wormwood to spare. I would love to explore another variety. Appearently it grows all over the world. There must be dozens of varieties, I would think.

Are herbs your business, or just a passion?

I like to grow fragrant herbs where you have to walk on them, or brush up against them. My wormwood nearly always blocks a well used path.

Not all the buckets are herbs. We also grow fruit trees, perennial roots and tubers, currants, raspberries, etc. in containers, as well as spring and summer veggie crops. We don't have a greenhouse, but we do bring some of the less hardy perennials under cover. The licorice plants spent the winter in an unheated shed, but they are really coming back strongly.

We lost about half the apple trees and all the persimmons and there were both local cultivars that should stand a normal winter here without any problems. Lost about half the raspberries too, another local strain. I don't think we've ever had any of them not overwinter successfully before and we must have had them for ten years or so. However, it really wasn't a normal winter.

I come from at least six generations of commercial horticulturists and I did work briefly for the family business, but these are just for our own consumption.

Swiss Absinthe of Montpellier From the recipe from P. Duplais treatise of 1871
THE “TRINITY”

Grand Wormwood 25 grams
Green Anise seed 60 grams
Fennel seed 40 grams
THE OTHER FLAVOR HERBS
Coriander seed 10 grams
Angelica root 5 grams

Coloring herbs
Petite (Small) Wormwood 10 grams
Dried Melissa (lemon balm) 7 grams
Dried Hyssop 7 grams

For 1 liter of Absinthe

Taste Notes

Nose :- Strong fennel sweetness

Sip straight :- Overpowering Alcohol

Dilute, no sugar :- Medium to strong louche that retains a light lime green color. Taste :- Hard heads-up bitter dominates the flavors.

Dilute, two sugar cubes :- The wormwood/artemisia note acts as a floral in a balance with the aniseed/fennel, nether dominating the other. As the initial tastes fade the bitterness of the wormwood and the slightly earthy/sweet tones of the Angelica/coriander remain in the mouth, slowly fading to the lingering bitterness one would expect from a well crafted American I.P.A.

Conclusion :- The simplicity of the ingredient list and the subtlety of the taste profile let me imagine how it could have been possible to have so many different brands, each with their own unique taste. A flavor like citrus or even vanilla or clove, would not be over-powered by the aniseed/fennel. This still needs to rest for five weeks until I sample again. Kiwi

Duplais specifies angelica seeds for the Montpellier rather than root. He specifies anglica root for the Nimes absinthe, along with black alder root. I've never found a source for the latter, although the tree was apparently introduced to the US during colonial times and is considered an invasive species in many areas.

Sweeps, do you have a source for Angelica seeds? Cost?
Hi Skow69. The two Abs I had, were modern, all I can afford.
Cold distillation is done under a vacuum, I believe there is a special head on the receiver flask.
The 10 mls sample is of the new product that was built on the old Fils sample, and the tasting notes are from the same.
I just posted my recipe, and the tasting results. Kiwi

kiwi Bruce wrote:Sweeps, do you have a source for Angelica seeds? Cost?

Never seen angelica seed for sale in decent quantities. Thankfully, it's easy to grow and you can pick up a small pack of seed to get you started from any well stocked garden seed company. A few plants will produce quite a lot of seed, but a surprisingly small amount of root given the size of the plant.

This is why I had to drag all those buckets of plants with me when I moved - can't affordably buy angelica seed by the ounce, can't buy decent dried wormwood, can rarely buy pontica at all. Home grown is pretty much the only practical way to go for some things.

What was the abv of the absinthe you described? How much did you dilute it?

Sweeps, How would you describe the difference in the taste between Angelica root and seed? The ABV on the Abs above was 62* I have a set of Pontarlier style glasses. They hold an ounce and a half in the lower bowl and four ounces of water on top. The only real antique I have is an Abs spoon from Baltimore. I forget the name,(Richardson?) but they sold their Absinthe in a gift set with glasses and spoons around 1880. Never seen a label. The distillery in Philadelphia was liberty. I have seen the label for that. In Boston it was Papillon changed to Butterfly around 1900. I have seen the labels for this also. Kiwi

I think what I'm aiming for is building a taste map similar to the ones for single malts.

Angelica seeds and root are similar in flavour, but the seeds are a little more delicate and lack the slight bitter tinge that the root has.

Strictly speaking, angelica seeds are actually fruit. The same goes for anise, fennel and coriander and they are all quite closely related. Ditto for caraway, cumin, dill and a whole bunch of other stuff I don't recall offhand. I don't understand how out of all of these, angelica seed is the only one not readily available in useful quantities at reasonable prices.

Good notes Sweeps Thank you! kiwi

Rebooting an old thread to address something I wrote earlier. Figured it made more sense than starting a new thread.

sweeps wrote:Duplais specifies angelica seeds for the Montpellier rather than root. He specifies anglica root for the Nimes absinthe, along with black alder root. I've never found a source for the latter, although the tree was apparently introduced to the US during colonial times and is considered an invasive species in many areas.

The English translation does indeed specify roots of the black alder for the Absinthe of Nimes. However, I was reading the original the other night (practising my very rusty French) and I noticed that Duplais specified "racines d' aunée":

https://books.google.com/books?id=tKM5A ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

This would be roots of elecampane, not alder. Alder is "aulne" in French, so I guess that was an easy mistake to make.

thanks for bumping this thread. Id not come across it before.



cheers


rager

Hi sweeps,

I can't believe you posted that. I have an old note in my recipe file, from prolly 3 years back, that just says, "find elecampane and try it."

I remember doing some research, and I couldn't find any reference to elecampane. I've forgotten, long ago, what prompted me to write the note. I don't remember seeing it in any other recipe. Duplais was apparently mistranslated, and I certainly didn't read it in the original french from the belle epoch. So the note has just been laying there, as a curiosity.

So anyway, what the hell is elecampane and do I want to put it in my absinthe? [BTW the spell checker doesn't believe it's a word, either.]

Hi all,
Looks like elecampane is a flower.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elecampane" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Alantolactone, the main ingredient of elecampane's volatile oils is found to have apoptosic properties, so it is one of the great many number of herbs that have anti-cancer effect. Nonetheless it is a strong allergenic sesquiterpene lactone, so those who have experienced allergic effects after consumption of chamomile, echinacea or fewerfew should be advised. Elecampane root can be purchased for $1/oz. from a US herbshop I found.

This spring I will travel to Switzerland and try to collect some local artemisia-species while hiking, especially A. genepi. Thank you Skow69 and Sweeps for the generous contribution, it is an honor to read the knowledge you shared here!

skow69 wrote: So anyway, what the hell is elecampane and do I want to put it in my absinthe? [BTW the spell checker doesn't believe it's a word, either.]

I seem to recall someone mentioned it on these forums before and their autocomplete turned it into "elephantine root".

Elecampane is a really easy plant to grow and it looks spectacular when it's in flower. It's a member of the astaracea family, which contains many potent medicinals, but as Paulinka noted, allergies to plants in this family are not uncommon.

I've made elecampane ale a few times and it's great when you are recovering from a cold. Not sure how it would play in an absinthe, but I've got a nice stock of dried root, so I guess there's only one way to find out.