Home Distiller

Thanks for the input, everybody, that settles a question that has been nagging at me for a long time. And sweeps, I look forward to your review.

On a side note....
Like any true blue obsessive absinthe freak, sweeps' correction sent me scrounging blindly through the original texts (armed with my new french word for root) to see if I could learn anything. I stumbled across a recipe for what appears to be an angelica liqueur. It calls for both root and seeds as well as a little coriander and fennel. I won't post the recipe because I can't read the instructions, but I found it in the 1882 edition of Duplais, vol.1, pg. 295, available from Oxygenee, if anyone is interested. It is probably in any edition you have access to, as well as Fritsch and deBrevans, in the liqueurs section.

Has anyone tried this, or something similar? It sounds like it might be delicious. Sweeps, next time you need to exercise your translator's skills, could you have a look?

The Europeans seem to have dozens of these obscure, traditional, regional folksy kind of beverages. Some sound horrible, like besk, a wormwood schnapps. Some sound really exotic and sophisticated, like chartreuse, that can only be made by this one order of monks on top of a mountain in the Balkans someplace. They supposedly use like 30 secret herbs, won't allow the recipe to be written down, and sell the stuff for prices that rival good absinthes.

Makes you wonder, there must tons of them that we'll never even hear of. Some are probably excellent. I wonder if they are impressed by the vast diversity of our bourbons. Har!

Don't take that too seriously. I love bourbon. But ya gotta wonder.

I must admit, I like besk, but it's best made with sea wormwood (Artemisia maritima), rather than A. Absinthium. Also, the commercial versions (Malort is the best known example) tend to use a base spirit with poor cuts and hope the the bitterness of the wormwood will disguise the heads.

I share your fascination with the European herbal liqueurs. When I have a moment, I'll pick through Duplais and take a look at that angelica recipe.

I assume that you are referring to the créme d'angélique recipe? I don't have a copy of the Oygenée reprint, but I assume it's like this one:

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

First of all, the numbers seem a bit odd. I would have expected the amount of 85% to have been 38 liters, rather than 30. I also couldn't find this recipe in any of the French editions of Duplais on Google books, they all use essences instead of roots and seeds. The original English translation shows the recipe as:

https://books.google.com/books?id=li8tA ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

However, both de Brevans and Robinet give recipes for seeds/root:

https://books.google.com/books?id=F59CA ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

https://books.google.com/books?id=J8IpA ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The quantities look a bit off to me, though. If my mental arithmetic is correct, the de Brevans and Robinet recipes use less than half the amount of botanicals as the first recipe. They all look like they'd be a little sweet for my taste, too.

wow, sweeps, thanks for your efforts. Interesting results. I can't believe that Nathan-Maisters' translation and the original actually came from the same text. Seems like there must a glitch in the provenance somehow. Did you notice the original trans lists another Creme d'Angelique?https://books.google.com/books?id=li8tA ... &q&f=false
Spirits of root, seeds, and sugar.

Anyway, yes, it was the first one that caught my attention. I'll have to find some seeds and try it.

I'm embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me to look for the treatises in Google books. Boy, have I been doing things the hard way.

Yeah, I'm not sure what happened with that translation. I've not been able to find that recipe in any of the Duplais editions to which I have access. I did find plenty of other books that contained variations of the recipe with essences.

Bonnor-Petit gives a couple of different versions of crème d'angélique using "real" ingredients:

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

The first one is fresh angelica tops, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, the second is fresh anglica roots, tops and seeds. Some of Bonnor-Petit's recipes look a little questionable, but others look really intriguing. His crème de menthe with mint, genipi and calamus is tempting, but I've never gotten around to trying it. His first recipe for Chartreuse can't possibly be right. It looks like a recipe for something completely different, although I don't know what.

Wow, it's starting to look like "Throw a dart at the spice cabinet." I wonder how much of this is due to tastes changing over time or, more likely, across regions.

I'm not sure that compounding from essences really counts as cheating in the same way that we think of it today. It seems that the author expects the distiller to produce his own essences fresh, on site. I saw the generic recipe for "essence of X" ( in Duplais, I think) listed as a double distillation of X macerate. Not the same thing as distilling the combined ingredients, for sure, but it's got to be a cut above the Czech crapsinthes or Gert Strand's essence-of-blue-dye-#6-with-an-extra-bottle-of-besk kicker. (Don't ask how I know.)

On a brighter, spring-like note, I'm staking out Artimesia-land in the garden. I know this is child's play for you, but it feels like a pretty big deal to me. I've been threatening to grow my own forever and this is the year it's going to happen. I've got the A.a. seeds in a drawer and verified a source for live Pontica, just waiting for a little warmer days. [I just realized how ridiculous that sounds. I've got myself all psyched out over garden herbs, for hell's sake.]

I think I see your point with the chartreuse. For #1 I picture sort of gin syrup, and #2 has no juniper at all. I've never tasted it, so I couldn't even guess which one is right, but I'm pretty sure they can't both be. You have probably looked into this. Does #2 look like a reasonable facsimile? Would it damage my karma if I fly to Albania, kidnap a monk, and torture him for the recipe? Ah, they're probably used to that, anyway. Damn, now I have to go look for chartreuse in Fritsch and deBrevans, and feed it to google translate one french word at a time. It's a good thing I'm retired.

That sounds ridiculous? Sounds perfectly normal to me, although my wife keeps telling me that I get unreasonably excited over the entire Artemisia family.

I agree totally about essences. I put "real" ingredients in quotes because I really feel that the Duplais approach to essences (grow the herbs, presumably in your own garden, prepare your own essences using quality neutral and blend them in your kitchen) is a very different game to running a Turbo wash without cuts, then adding vodka flavoring, or whatever. In fact, I think that preparing your own essences is an art in its own right and might sometimes have advantages over working with the raw botanicals.

Regarding the de Brevans Chartreuse recipes, I'm pretty sure that the first one is a mistake. I can't imagine how that could taste anything like Chartreuse, although I find it interesting enough that one day I might give it a go just to see what it tastes like.

The second one looks much more reasonable. I've not tried it, but I have done the green, the yellow and the white recipes from Duplais and they all worked out very well. The ingredients list in de Bravans is similar to the Duplais recipe, but the quantities are much higher. In fact, I recall asking about this on these very forums a year or two ago. In the end, I haven't seen much point in trying it as I like the Duplais version and it makes my herbs go a bit further.

https://books.google.com/books?id=pFFmE ... se&f=false

"recipes...produce perfect imitations of the liqueurs manufactured by the monks of St. Bruno...."
Duplais, 1871

I am intrigued.

Posted with readingyour replies

well there it is, then. Now I need angelica seeds and Tonka beans. Whatever they are.

Tonka beans are probably not something you can grow yourself, unless you have a rainforest in your back yard. They have a nice vanilla-like flavor similar to bison grass, but they are banned as a food ingredient in the US. However, you can easily pick them up on eBay for use in hoodoo spells and the like. A few beans will make a lot of fake Chartreuse and are unlikely to cause you any major health issues with the quantities used. I'm not a doctor, but the ethanol is likely to mess you up long before you've ingested enough tonka to be a problem. Probably not a good idea to mix tonka beans and blood thinners, but if you are on blood thinners you probably shouldn't be drinking fancy booze either.

Cool. I'm in. Are Tonka beans shaped like little dump trucks or something? Cuz that would be really cool!

The more I learn about this magical (or maybe blessed) Chartreuse, the more intrigued, and determined, I become. They claim no less than 130 plants and herbs in the verte. And they are monks, for Christ's sake, they can't lie. The original recipe development must have been a bitch. "Damn it, Brother Jean-Pierre, we agreed on 15 grams of balsam poplar buds. It is obvious from the taste of this sample that thou only macerated 14 grams!" Good thing they had divine help.

There seems to be a lively market for vintage product, also. I noticed that verte from the 1956-1964 region is readily available at 999.95 euros/fifth. Apparently it improves with age. I'll bet the followers of St. Bruno have a tidy stash of dusty old bottles squirreled away on top of their mountain. The annual Christmas party must be a riot.

Actually, I'm surprised they can sell it as cheaply as they do, with 130 herb bill. Being tax exempt and having no payroll probably helps some, I suppose.

I am so blown away, I just can't wrap my head around it. Must stop typing. Before I make fool of self. Oh, screw it., one more absinthe.

<<<Louche break>>>

"And on the eighth day, God invented the pot still. And He saw that it was good. And He spake unto it, saying, 'We are gonna make some righteous neon colored booze, and give it to St. Bruno, so his homies can collect lots of cash for the widows and orphans and shit'."

I'm really looking forward to this.

In the name of the Wormwood, and the Anise, and the Holy Fennel,
Amen.

Sadly, the tonka beans just look like beans. They are only required for the white version. The tricky ingredient for the green version is poplar buds. I think I bought mine on eBay, but I don't see any listed there right now. If you have Eastern Cottonwood in your area, I think you can substitute its buds.

Ya, I'll be making a green for the first go. I'm in Oregon so no Eastern Cottonwoods, but I found Balm of Gilead buds on Etsy, arnica flowers from Mt. Rose, Angelica seeds online for $2/hundred. The other major ingredients are already here (now that I know balsamite is Costmary). I'm thinking fresh Thyme from the produce market, mace and cinnamon out of the spice rack, and Bob's yer uncle. To my complete amazement, that makes the out-of-pocket cost low enough that can place orders tonight and have the ball rolling. I have about a half gal of clean 95% waiting for an assignment, so theoretically I could have a test batch of faux Carthusian white dog in hand in a matter of days. Ha! As if!

I won't order anything yet in hopes that you will get a chance to weigh in on this, sweeps. It feels like an area where I may know enough to recognize what kind of mistake I might be making. And I certainly don't want to jeopardize this project over a few bucks.

Thanks, man. Gotta mow the lawn.

Mow the lawn?? I can't even see my lawn for snow!

If you can make a decent absinthe, you shouldn't have any trouble with this recipe. The only concern I have with your shopping list is the angelica seeds. I'd guess 100 seeds to be around .5 grams, which is going to be a bit light for a half gallon batch. If your angelica root is nice and fragrant, I guess I'd just up the quantities of that to compensate. I don't really have any better suggestions, as angelica root is next to impossible to find in sizeable quantities at good prices. Hell, it's hard to find in sizeable quantities at any price. I'm down to the last bit of my 2013 stash of angelica seed and I don't know what I'll do when I run out. We're probably moving again this year, so I likely won't be able to grow my own until next year.

I checked my poplar buds. Apparently I bought them from Penn Herb, rather than eBay. I was told it's best to keep them in the freezer until you need them. Oh - and I remember Eurostiller recommending to macerate them whole, rather than chop them up.

I found a better deal on A. seeds and ordered a half ounce. Sounds like I'd better plant some. I figured the recipe scaled down to 2g/l. I try to be as accurate as possible with these tiny batches because a small error can have such a huge effect. The minor herbs here scale down to 4 grains/liter, but I wouldn't dare leave out those 4 grains since we seem to be missing about 115 ingredients already. Glad I've got a powder scale. I'm really surprised at the size of the herb bill, looks like around a quarter of the total amount of botanicals for an absinthe.

I have a couple more questions. The instructions say digest in 62l of spirit, distill and rectify to get 60l. So I assume it's taken for granted that the distiller will dilute the charge as necessary at each step, prolly doubling the volume or so.

I saw the Ergot rectification apparatus.
What a work of art! It's like a steampunk flute. I love it.

I have a column, but I'm thinking double run through the pot still. What is your preference?

Then it's mellow, color, size, repose, and filter. I need to study this mellowing process some more. It's another new old tool that i'm not familiar with yet. I'll be curious about how you color, and your thoughts about clarifying and aging as well, but I don't want to bog you down with too many requests all at once. Last week at this time I didn't think that homegrown Chartreuse was even possible, so I'm happy just to get a shot at it.

I think I mentioned that this is the first time I've had access to a complete copy of Duplais. I have to say I love this book. Besides all the technical information, his writing is fantastic. I saw the anecdote where he reports that Count Cagliostro used his elixer to repair the health of Mlle. Salmon, whose father "had been condemned to be burned alive...." You don't get that kind of cultural context from Julia Child.

That rectification apparatus looks much like more than a few Pistorius-plate on top of each other. Used as partial dephlegmator, potstills fitted with one or two Pistorius-plates are fairly common in rural Hungary's old village-distilleries. Cooled with warm water poured from top that gets warmer as it fills the plates below it levels the temperature of the steam inside to the temperature of the water above the plate. I will try to get some plans and share it.

Cool. I'd love to see drawings or pictures. I'm not familiar with the term "Pistorius-plate," but they look like the lentiles that are sometimes added on to alembics. It makes sense that you could stack up several of them to good advantage, but it might get tricky to run if you have to keep the flow or temperature of the cooling water within some range.

I'm happy to try to answer any questions that I can, but I should throw in the disclaimer that I am not claiming to be an expert on this topic, just someone whose done a few successful runs over the last couple of years.

First off, angelica. Definitely worth growing if you have the space. You don't get a lot of root material from one plant, but you do get a bunch of seeds, which are much harder than root to buy commercially. I've personally found angelica much easier to grow than fennel and anise, but you need to make sure that the seed is very fresh, as germination rates drop off very quickly as the seed ages.

I treat this (and the other similar herbal liqueurs I've done) very much like I do my absinthe - single run in a pot still. It's been quite a while since I've had real Chartreuse, so I don't know how close my versions really come to mimicking the original, but they are very tasty drinks. I do them in one liter batches, macerate the herbs about 24 hours in around 80% ABV neutral (although my very first batch went several days due to a power outage and was still fine), add a liter of water (plus any feints from previous batches, if I have any), then run it through the toy still. After collecting about 750ml, I start collecting in really small quantities and after collecting 1 liter, I assume I'm into feints. I let everything air our and carefully check the last jars to see if they should be added to the good stuff, or thrown in with the feints.

Coloring I also do similarly to how I do my absinthes - take about 10% of the distillate, add the herbs, steep until slightly deeper color than required, filter it a couple of times, then add back to the rest of the product. The white is easy to color (duh!), the yellow is also easy (just a few threads of saffron), the green a bit more challenging. I use hyssop and lemon balm, roughly equal amounts of each. Getting the right shade is fairly easy, getting it to stay that shade is tougher. No idea how Chartreuse does it - they claim it's only liqueur in the world with a completely natural green color. The lower ABV means that the color fades much faster than it does with an absinthe. Definitely some room for experimentation on this point.

I dilute to final proof and sweeten in the same step, using a sugar syrup. I ahge by putting it in a bottle and trying to leave it alone. That last step is the hardest part of the whole process. It drops some sediment over time, so as the bottles get drained, I decant it to other bottles. It definitely improves with age, but each batch I've made has been definitely drinking almost right from the start.

Finally, Duplais was indeed a very engaging writer, but you know Julia Child worked for OSS during WWII? Sadly, she wouldn't have been allowed to write about any of her experiences.

We have a few Anise Hyssop plants that have been regenerating for the past few years.
This year I am going to split some and try to start some of the seeds I have collected as ornamentals.
Even though Pacific Distillers is local for us - and we keep a bottle in the bar, my wife loves herbals... so she asked me to make some with the Hook Rum, or explore using borrowed neutrals.
I can achieve a few pints of almost 160 from a double distillation of Hook Rum that might be a nice base.
We have angelica, some wormwood, anise, star anise and a bunch of other locally grown herbs in amazon jar waiting to be soaked.
I suppose that some warning/info/knowledge about the medicinal value of these herbs in certain concentrates need to be looked into. I don't want too much anti-inflamatories... do I?
Love this thread! - Go buy some Pacifica and try it for yourself - delicious!
(not paid to say that^^)

skow69 wrote:Cool. I'd love to see drawings or pictures.

or http://chestofbooks.com/science/chemist ... 66-The.png
There is a deflector plate that stands in way of the steam, and the top vessel must be cooled with hot water, otherwise the alcohol would turn to condensate and fall back. It is mainly used for grape-marc ferment, which has around 2% alc. v/v, and low wines made from it must reach at least 10% alc. v/v, as it is a statutory obligation. This watercooled dephlegmator's inventor is Johann Heinrich Leberecht Pistorius, and he patented the design in 1817, as "Pistoriusschen Brennaparat". Quite easy to make and install a few of these on top of a pot-still, but it takes years of practice to master it.

Despite the names, hyssop and anise hyssop are unrelated plants. I don't know of any liqueurs based on anise hyssop.

A good starting point for learning about herbs is Maude Grieve's "A Modern Herbal". There's a neat searchable online version here:

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

Not sure that rum would be the best base liquor for these sorts of drinks. I suspect that the rum flavor would tend to overpower the herbs, although I could be wrong.

Paulinka wrote: There is a deflector plate that stands in way of the steam, and the top vessel must be cooled with hot water, otherwise the alcohol would turn to condensate and fall back. It is mainly used for grape-marc ferment, which has around 2% alc. v/v, and low wines made from it must reach at least 10% alc. v/v, as it is a statutory obligation. This watercooled dephlegmator's inventor is Johann Heinrich Leberecht Pistorius, and he patented the design in 1817, as "Pistoriusschen Brennaparat". Quite easy to make and install a few of these on top of a pot-still, but it takes years of practice to master it.

Wow. Ya, I can imagine that could be pretty fiddly to run. I guess I was hoping there would be more magic than that going on inside. No doubt it was a major innovation in 1817. When I look at it with my 21st century eyes I just want to extend the pipe and bend the deflector plate some more to make an inline thumper, which, of course, is totally unfair to Mr. Pistorius. If not for work like his, we wouldn't have thumpers at all. I do enjoy watching the evolution of the hardware over the last couple of centuries.

I browsed through that book by Sydney Young for a bit. There are some interesting devices in there. I even stumbled on to a ponu still. There's something you don't see every day.

Well, I had a whole long , thoughtful post written, my browser crashed, and I lost it. This one will probably be shorter.

First, sweeps, thank you for you time. I appreciate it very much. And I promise not to hold you responsible when things go wrong. Now, I don't really have garden space in abundance, and especially garden space in full sun. But I've read today that both wormwood and angelica are shade tolerant. Sweeps, does that match your experience, or should I reserve some sun-zone for them. Next, does angelica need to be planted annually from seed or are they perennial? Also how many do you grow? Are a half dozen enough? I think I'm not concerned with harvesting root, since it is readily available. But the seeds are obviously an issue. Most sources seem to agree that germination is sketchy, so I'm thinking I'll try to start way more than necessary indoors in rockwool or similar and hope for enough good ones to transplant. The seeds should be here within a week. Wormwood sounds tougher and I might put the Pontica in buckets for containment. Although it seems odd that something so invasive is so notoriously hard to buy.

Your distillation protocol sounds good. I thought it was odd that Duplais called for rectification. Maybe I'll try that later sometime. For absinthe I always collect tails equal to the hearts so I'll have them for the next round. It makes sense that other herbals would benefit from the same sort of reinforcement. You steep the coloring herbs cold? What is the advantage? How long does it take? Do you bottle the Chartreuse at 55%?

Julia Child was a spy??? Now that you mention it, she might be ideal. She was intelligent, courageous, and the last person on earth that I would suspect.

Actually, "spy" might be an overstatement, but she served with OSS during WWII. One thing I recall reading about her was that she helped come up with a shark deterrent to stop sharks from setting off submarine mine fields intended for German U-Boats. I wonder if she published the recipe in any of her books?

Angelica does best in dappled shade, in my experience. It also likes nice rich soil and plenty of water. It's actually a biennial, but I've never been able to get it to overwinter here. I've heard that in really mild places, you can grow it as a perennial. Usually they have self-seeded for me in spring, but last year we had an early mild spell, followed by a really vicious extended cold period, so that didn't work out too well for them. Half a dozen plants should net you a very nice supply of seed. I've heard you can propagate them by root division, but I've never tried that. I've tried cuttings, but that didn't work too well. Germination can be improved by stratifying the seed - stick a bunch of seeds in a plastic bag with a bit of seed starter mix in the fridge for a couple of months, then germinate them at room temperature.

Wormwood is much less fussy. Ditto for pontica. I find they both grow well in containers and will tolerate a wide range of conditions.

For coloring, I warm things up a bit first. (I could be wrong, but I've always used "macerate" to mean a room temperature soaking and "steep" to mean a warm or hot soaking.) The warmer it is, the faster it will extract the color and flavor, but I don't like to get it to the point to where I'm cooking off the alcohol. I've never really timed it, I just do it until it looks right. If I recall correctly, it takes a little longer to get the right shade than it does with absinthe, but not like overnight or anything. Maybe an hour or two.

Rereading what I wrote before, I said I colored about 10% of the product - that should have been about 20%. However, I definitely bottle at 55% ABV. I'm sure there's a lot of room for experimentation for this step.

I think I prefer to believe that Julia was a spy. I picture her in a trench coat with a big floppy hat and dark glasses. He he he.

Thanks for the horticultural tips. That's very helpful.

My problem with color has always been the fade to brown. A while back I tried heating each of the coloring herbs separately. I found that none of them needed more than 135f to give the perfumed spirit all the color they were going to. So the last two batches I limited to that. The oldest one is about six weeks now, and still green, which I think is a record. I might even try holding to 130 next time, as long as it makes a nice peridot.

You probably knew this already, but it was news to me when I found this in Duplais.
Oh really, calamus and angelica, eh? Seems like that might have been appropriate to include in a recipe somewhere. Oh well, they'll be in the color for the next batch. And I think I will read that whole chapter a couple more times, very carefully.

OMG, Pierre, calm down!

"This so-called Swiss absinthe has attracted public attention for some time...(because of)...the abuses of this product, a horrible curse which is killing the youth of our colleges, decimating the army, and will cause the fatal debasement of the rising generation.
In order to increase the sale of this truly horrible beverage...."
Duplais p.244

If I didn't know better, I would think that he wasn't a fan.

Yeah, I've read that bit in Duplais, but I've never been able to figure out why he is recommending adding those ingredients at the coloring stage. Are they to add extra flavor? I usually have angelica in the main maeration anyway, so I'm not sure I need extra angelica flavor. Are they supposed to help fix the color? Angelica is used as a perfume and flavor fixative, but I'm not aware of it having any color fixative properties. So I've never bothered trying it.

Have you ever tried veronica in the coloring stage?

It's also called speedwell, right? Ya, just 1g/l. But not organized enough to know what the effect is. I've tried mint, too. Again, without drawing any conclusions.

I assume the monks are excluding absinthe when they say they have the only naturally colored liqueur.

Does yours stay green?