Smoking grass with picasso

alexander · February 12, 2005

Modern absinthe only has about 10% of the wormwood as it did in the early th century. At this level the alcohol content is more of a factor than anything else.

here's how to make your own, not saying that you should, but i found a recepie:

"ABSINTHE RECIPE

(From Dale Pendell's Pharmako/Poeia)

30.0 g wormwood

8.5 g hyssop

1.8 g calamis

6.0 g melissa

30.0 g anise seed

25.0 g fennel seed

10.0 g star anise

3.2 g coriander seed

Put the dry herbs in a large jar. Dampen slightly. Add 800 ml of 85-95 percent alchohol. Wine spirits make a better product than pure grain alcohol. Let it steep for several days - a week is better - shaking occasionally. Then add 600 ml of water and let the whole macerate for another day. Decant off the liquid squeezing as much from the mass of herb as possible. Wet the herbs with some vodka and squeeze again. Recipe should give a little over a liter and a half of green liquor. It must then be distilled. Inferior recipes skip this step, but what they produce is not worthy to be called absinthe.

In the distillation, change the receiver when the distillate turns yellow: those ar the faints. You can save the faints and add them to future distillations, but they will taint the flavor if added directly to the product. Just use the good stuff. The next step is to color and finish the liqueur by another round of maceration.

Color the distillate by again adding:

4.2 g mint

1.1 g melissa

3.0 g wormwood

1.0 g citron peel

4.2 g liquorice root

Let the herbs macerate for another three or four days. Decant, filter, bottle. You will probably want to carefully add some concentrated sugar syrup to the blend. The result will be a Swiss style absinthe of about 135 proof.Recipe makes one liter of absinthe."