Henri-Louis Pernod, who first distilled commercial Absinthe during the early nineteenth century in Pontarlier, France, used a wine alcohol base. He distilled the alcohol with herbs such as wormwood, fennel, aniseed, hyssop, angelica, lemon balm, star anise, juniper, veronica, dittany as well as nutmeg. Wine is the conventional base for Absinthe but some distillers use other types of alcohol.
If you try to find Absinthe recipes online, you will see that many of them include steeping blends of herbs in liquor just like Everclear, white rum or vodka.
How Do You Create Absinthe from home?
Although some recipes on the web are for distilling Absinthe, distillation of liquor without a license is illegal in lots of countries and also you require the right equipment and you also have to know what you are doing. So, are there any other strategies to making Absinthe?
– Steeping and Filtering – This typically involves steeping herbs like wormwood, fennel, aniseed, calamus root, star anise, mint, coriander seeds, cloves etc. for a few days or even a couple of weeks inside the neutral alcohol base and then filtering. Just distillation will provide you with a genuine Absinthe, this will just present you with an Absinthe flavored vodka.
– Using an Absinthe Kit – Almost all of the kits available online, such as the ones from Green Devil, are just steeping kits. They may be easier than finding and preparing your own personal herbs however you are simply steeping the herbs in vodka again and making a flavored vodka.
– Using an Absinthe kit form AbsintheKit.com is a much simpler and better approach to make Absinthe from home. AbsintheKit.com create essences for the Absinthe industry and the essences are produced by distilling traditional Absinthe herbs in alcohol. The distillation is done for you and all you need to do is mix the essence with vodka or Everclear and you’ve got a true Absinthe drink.
The essences come in four distinct kinds:-
– Classic Green Essence to produce a vintage “verte” Absinthe which has a thujone content of 35mg per bottle.
– Clear Absinthe Essence to produce a clandestine La Bleue style Absinthe. This too includes a thujone content of 35mg.
– Orange Essence to produce Absinthe with a twist. This essence is likely to make a yellow-orange colored Absinthe which has a natural orange flavor and also a thujone content of 35mg.
– Strong 55 Essence will make an Absinthe having a higher thujone content (55mg) and a more bitter wormwood flavor.
You may either get a 20ml bottle of essence for $3.95 to make one 750ml bottle of Absinthe or get a kit for $29 to make 14 bottles of Absinthe. A kit also includes a handy plastic measure and 14 imaginative bottle labels. All that you should supply is the neutral alcohol base. Just remember that the alcohol content of your Absinthe will depend on your alcohol base. Be cautious, drink Absinthe moderately since it is a much stronger beverage than other spirits as well as fermented drinks.
What alcohol is use in Absinthe? A wine alcohol base or a neutral alcohol which lacks a strong taste of its own – Everclear, vodka or 151 rum.