rabidtictac wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 10:00 am
I've never had absinthe, and I can't remember if I've ever even seen it at the liquor stores here.
If you have, you haven't.
Because Absinthe was banned for a good while, there is no regulated definition of it.
So you can just take any neutral grain alcohol, add flavouring and green food colour and call it Absinthe.
I can all but guarantee you that anything on the shelves isn't proper Absinthe anyway.
It's an abomination but regular practice in Čzeská. They also introduced the dumb ritual of drenching a sugar cube and lighting it on fire.
It's something to impress in bars with spectacle but has no bearings in actual 18th century Absinth culture.
Actual Absinth is a macerated spirit.
Herbs don't have enough sugar to make alcohol via fermentation or brewing. So instead you take neutral grain spirit or wine spirit and just throw the herbs in them to soak up the flavours.
You distill that and get a clear spirit with the herbal flavours.
To make it green, you throw in other herbs and later just filter them out, no further distillation because you'd end up with a clear product yet again.
So a proper Absinthe is always macerated grain or wine spirit with at least vermouth, fennel and green anise, then distilled and then again macerated and filtered with other herbals.
Which ones you chose at either part of the process is entirely up to the distillery.
It
must focus vermouth! French ones are usually very anise forward, Čzeská ones (the few proper ones) are usually very low on anise.
If you like anise even a little bit, give Absinthe a try!
There's also Pastis, the replacement product Pernod et al have been making for literal centuries rhat focuses in the anise. It's mostly star anise. I like it but green anise tastes better and it is woefully missing the flowery, herbal note of the vermouth.
It's like half a drink.
*By the way, I say "vermouth" intentionally. The English word for it is absolutely retarded, because its nothing but total dents over the years going full Idiocracy on it because they either couldn't or wouldn't pronounce either "vermouth" or "Wermut".
You'd sooner cat h me dead than me ever saying or writing that 45 IQ term.