What alcohol is use in Absinthe?
Henri-Louis Pernod, who first distilled industrial Absinthe in early nineteenth century in Pontarlier, France, used a wine alcohol base. He distilled the alcohol with herbs for instance wormwood, fennel, aniseed, hyssop, angelica, lemon balm, star anise, juniper, veronica, dittany and nutmeg. Wine is the conventional base for Absinthe but some distillers use other kinds of alcohol.
If you try to find Absinthe recipes online, you will notice that many of them involve steeping blends of herbs in liquor such as Everclear, white rum or vodka.
How would you Produce Absinthe in your own home?
However some recipes online are for distilling Absinthe, distillation of liquor without a license is against the law in many countries and also you require the right equipment and also you have to know what you are doing. So, are there any other ways of making Absinthe?
– Steeping and Filtering – This generally involves steeping herbs such as wormwood, fennel, aniseed, calamus root, star anise, mint, coriander seeds, cloves etc. for a few days or possibly a few weeks in the neutral alcohol base and then filtering. Just distillation will give you a genuine Absinthe, this will just provide you with an Absinthe flavored vodka.
– Employing an Absinthe Kit – Most of the kits available online, such as the ones from Green Devil, are simply steeping kits. They may be easier than finding and preparing your own personal herbs but you’re merely steeping the herbs in vodka again and making a flavored vodka.
– Using an Absinthe kit form AbsintheKit.com is a less difficult and better approach to make Absinthe in your own home. AbsintheKit.com produce essences for the Absinthe industry and also the essences are produced by distilling standard Absinthe herbs in alcohol. The distillation is completed for you and all you have to do is mix the essence with vodka or Everclear and you have a real Absinthe drink.
The essences come in four different types:-
– Classic Green Essence to make a classic “verte” Absinthe with a thujone content of 35mg per bottle.
– Clear Absinthe Essence to make a clandestine La Bleue style Absinthe. This too has a thujone content of 35mg.
– Orange Essence to produce Absinthe having a twist. This essence could make a yellow-orange coloured Absinthe having a natural orange flavor and a thujone content of 35mg.
– Strong 55 Essence is likely to make an Absinthe with a higher thujone content (55mg) and also a more bitter wormwood taste.
You can either buy a 20ml bottle of essence for $3.95 to make one 750ml bottle of Absinthe or get a kit for $29 to produce 14 bottles of Absinthe. A kit comes with a handy plastic gauge and 14 imaginative bottle labels. All you need to supply is the neutral alcohol base. Just remember that the alcohol content of your Absinthe depends on your alcohol base. Be mindful, drink Absinthe in moderation because it’s a significantly tougher beverage than other spirits as well as fermented drinks.
What alcohol is use in Absinthe? A wine alcohol base or a neutral alcohol which does not have a substantial taste of its own – Everclear, vodka or 151 rum.