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The Secrets And Myths Of Belle Epoque Absinthe With Allan Bishop
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Allan Bishop is a professional distiller, YouTuber, podcaster and historian. In this episode, he shares the secrets of French Absinthe from the 1800's (Belle Epoque absinthe) as well as dispelling some Absinthe myths.
Old Homestead Distilling: https://www.oldhomesteaddc.com Alan's
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Transcript
Introduction to Absinthe and Alan Bishop
00:00:00
Speaker
How's it going chases? I hope you're having a kick-ass week. Right now, I am out in the shed distilling an absinthe, not just any absinthe. This is specifically a historically accurate bell epoch absinthe. It's a French absinthe from the late 1800s, early 1900s, that kind of
00:00:20
Speaker
era and it has some very, very interesting history attached to it. The reason I can make this absence and I have any idea what I'm doing is from the information you're about to learn in this podcast. So a huge, huge thank you to today's guest, Alan Bishop. Alan is a professional distiller, a tinkerer and historian for all things distilling space.
00:00:44
Speaker
specifically kind of American style spirits and Absinthe. Absinthe is kind of his one true love for personal projects when it comes to distilling.
00:00:54
Speaker
During this podcast, you're gonna hear Alan and I talk about Spirits of French Lick, which is where Alan used to work. Sorry team, it's taken me a little while to get this podcast out. I've been working on actually making the absinthe. But Alan has moved on to something else now and Spirits of French Lick is still an awesome distillery. As far as I know, everything was completely, it was all love between them, it's just Alan's moved on to something.
00:01:21
Speaker
which is old homestead distilling in Southern Indiana. I gotta say, Alan, I am absolutely frothing to find an excuse to get to America and you will be the first person on the list. The first person I have to make sure I come and see. Hang out, meet you in person, brother, and see this new distillery, because it sounds absolutely amazing. If you guys want to check out this new project, they have a website up now.
00:01:48
Speaker
more and more information is being added all the time. But I can't wait to see what new products and projects Alan puts out through this new venture. He has a YouTube channel called One Piece At A Time Distilling and a podcast called Distiller's Talk. I thoroughly encourage you to check both of those out. There's links down below.
00:02:06
Speaker
He's involved in some other non or distilling adjacent projects as well. I'll put links down there as well. Please team, if you find this enjoyable, go and check out what Alan's doing. He's a wealth of knowledge and he's well worth listening to.
00:02:20
Speaker
All right, Alan, uh, from spirits of French, like from dude, you've got a, a, a, a list here that we've got to rattle through, uh, spring French, like, uh, one piece at a time distilling. Uh, if you have ghosts, you have anything. What else am I forgetting you dude? I'm sure there's something distillers talk podcast. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Okay. So we'll put those right up front.
00:02:44
Speaker
If you enjoy hanging out and talking with Alan, you guys should go check his other stuff out too, because it's pretty interesting. And it's not every day that you get a professional distiller happy to talk like home distilling basically with home distillers. So that's pretty dope. Yeah. So Alan's worth following for anyone that's into this game, whatever stage you're at.
00:03:13
Speaker
We've plugged you now, dude. Now we can get all the fun stuff. Right. Yes, exactly. I'm glad. It's actually nice that you plugged it as opposed to like every other show I'm on where they're like at the end of the show, tell us where people can find you. And then I have to like, I've always felt like self-conscious. I rattle all that shit off and I'm like, Jesus. It just, it just, it feels like just self-congratulatory in some way. So I feel you dude. I feel the same.
00:03:39
Speaker
I figured I'd get it out of the way up front because otherwise I'll figure it out too.
Tasting the Belle Époque Absinthe
00:03:44
Speaker
So last time we talked, you helped me kind of like a 1700s, the, the birth of absinthe when absent moved from being mostly kind of migrations and infusions through actually being a distilled drink, the birth of absence. I actually sent you some of it, which I think we've got in front of you now, right? I've got some too.
00:04:07
Speaker
I do. I put off getting into this because I was waiting to be on the show with you to be able to see, as a matter of fact, my, my still hand, Justin Whaley's like, we should get into that absentee sentence. I'm like, uh-uh, that's waiting. That's waiting until I actually talk to him. So, um, so I've got no idea what you think of this. You don't have any idea what you think of us, but now you're having a sip. So tell the people, have you screwed up?
00:04:29
Speaker
You didn't. I haven't had a sip yet. I'm just nosing it, but the nose, it's obviously the nose is a little bit light on it, but I think that had to do with your, the botanicals that you were able to actually access where you're at as part of it, right? Because the botanical loads were, were ideal, really. I stood up and I forgot to add the mugwort in the final maceration afterwards. I completely forgot it.
00:04:54
Speaker
Gotcha. Gotcha. Which is also probably why it's quite light on color. It is a very nice nose, though. The anise and the fennel sort of characteristics are there. They're not overwhelming. They're not heading in that kind of artificial candy sort of direction. There is a little bit of that like whorehound slash root beer thing there, but not in like an overwhelming, again, apothecary style candy sort of way.
00:05:24
Speaker
Interestingly enough, it was really heavy on the mint when it was new. Sitting for a little bit, that seems to have mellowed out and the anise is coming through more.
00:05:34
Speaker
That mint on the palette though is absolutely beautiful. There's a brightness to that that is working really well with that anise, but it's also holding that anise back just a little bit. It's kind of constraining it in a positive way, in my opinion. That's actually really, really nice, just neat. What was the proof on that, Jesse? Do you know? You know what, dude? I actually don't. I could check for you.
00:05:59
Speaker
You know what? Let's hit pause and I'll look it up real quick. Cause now I'm interested as well. You know what, dude, I've got no idea. I'm not like, I might take some time to just take a guess at it. It's all right.
Evolution of Absinthe in Belle Époque
00:06:12
Speaker
It's all good. I'm just thinking I may have it. Um, I've been trying, trying to, uh, for the, for the longest time, I'm going to remember this.
00:06:23
Speaker
And it was easy when it was, this is the first wisdom I've ever made. And now there's like one in 50. I will tell you this, Jesse, that is a fantastic first outing on an absent. And that's, that's no lie. No, no bullshit. That is, there is nothing wrong with that. That I'm surprised by how much that meant came through, but how it's not,
00:06:49
Speaker
It's not overwhelming anything everything is balancing really nicely if i if i if there was one thing i'd say that i'd like to see a little bit more of an it would maybe be a little bit more the bitter in compound.
00:07:01
Speaker
But otherwise, I mean, honestly, that drinks a lot like there was a product. I can't even remember what distiller came from, but it came out of Eastern Europe and it was called Dubier. And it was based on one of the early absinthe recipes. And it had a very, very similar that mint characteristic that almost goes
00:07:21
Speaker
It doesn't come off like schnapps. I don't even know how to really explain it. It's more relaxed than that. I don't know what you mean. The amount of mint is dialed up almost to toothpaste levels, but then it's not a weird fake... It's just a mellow... I'm really impressed with it. The thing that I did notice is that the mint that I used, it was a dried, chopped mint.
00:07:45
Speaker
And it weighed nothing. Nothing. Nothing. It was just super, I think the water activity on it must've been so low. And when I was putting it, I was like, this, this doesn't feel right. This feels like a lot of men, but I'll just do it by way. Um, it's 62%. Nice. It did not, uh, did not drink like 62%.
00:08:09
Speaker
I don't get any water either. I'm slack. I didn't bring any water. I'm over here trying to pour it out of a glass like the proper hillbilly that I am and just spill on it all over myself. So don't feel bad. I feel like the proper hillbilly way would be to take a swig from the glass and then just spit it, wouldn't it? You're right. Yeah, that's the hillbilly cocktail there. Yeah. That's the sort of thing that I do off camera and just be like, no, it's great. No, no, no.
00:08:38
Speaker
When I tasted this, when it was done, I was like, I don't know absinthe at all. This tastes yum though. So it kind of tasted the yum test for me. It passed the yum test for me, I guess I should say. How close do you think it got to the actual 1700s absinthe? Like no excuses. Oh, this happened and that happened just like straight up. Is it in the vicinity of that kind of absinthe for you?
00:09:02
Speaker
It's pretty damn close. Like I say, the closest thing I compare it to is that Dubier. And even there was actually another one that was called Not Dubier, but it was still kind of in that same vein. That's the closest thing I can compare it to. You got real close to that. I did notice that when I looshed it, if the luch had gone a little darker, you'd have been closer because you had more of that mouthfeel for sure and more of that opaqueness to it.
00:09:26
Speaker
It's definitely not at all far off, though, as far as the flavor and aroma goes. And whenever I loosed it down as well, I also started to pick up some more of those bitter compounds. They started to come a little bit more to the forefront, which is really something that I look for in an absence because out of the sort of historic periods that we've already talked about, shorter some of the more modern things, I tend to lean a little bit more towards those real early absence and then also the Swiss Blanche styles. Because to me, a lot of the in-between stuff, the bell epoch,
00:09:54
Speaker
Can kind of go too much star anise it's almost. Yeah somebody add sugar to it and i'm like i feel like i need to be watching like a wilford brimley diabetes commercial or something so.
00:10:11
Speaker
The idea of getting sugar to this is crazy to me. Like, why would you do that to yourself? It's already sweet. And this is supposedly on the bitter side, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what's crazy too, is even though you didn't get a dark luch with this, you didn't get the opalescence, you got the mouthfeel. The mouthfeel is there, right? And that is a huge part of getting absense right is getting that mouthfeel for sure.
00:10:39
Speaker
All right, well, thank you. Very kind, sir. I also trust you to just call a spade a spade if you think it's a spade. So I kind of screwed up that badly.
00:10:49
Speaker
No, not at all. I'm very, very glad I did this exercise because this to me, if you had handed this to me, I would not have called it absinthe. Like I've had maybe six absinthes in my time. And the only one that was anything like this was we did a little like craft distillery that makes absinthe in Texas. And that was more like this, but the others just
00:11:13
Speaker
Everything I tried tasted like jelly bean sauce to me, like red jelly bean sauce. Yup. And that's a lot of, a lot of the craft distillers use star anise real heavy. And I think that that is sometimes that can be a little bit of a mistake. It can, it can definitely go more towards that black jelly bean because people make that mistake anyways. They think, they think absent, they think black jelly bean, but that anise flavor and that jelly bean flavor are not exactly the same, right? Unless you're using star anise. So.
00:11:42
Speaker
Well, it's crazy, dude. I, I will come right out and say that until I started looking into this, I had no idea that anise and a seed are the same thing, but star anise is different. I did not know that it is not that star anise is not the same thing. And it is a hundred percent different, like star anise is sweeter, but somehow kind of savory as well. That might be my association with like Vietnamese food.
00:12:10
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe it's not actually savory flavor, but yeah. And here in America, you may even have it there, but like a Barge root beer has a lot of that star anise sort of characteristic, right? It's almost the candy thing, but then you also get a little bit of spice that comes out of it. And yeah, I was with you when I first got into distilling absinthe years ago. I don't know that I understood the distinction, especially working at Copper and Kings because we use so much star anise, but yeah, star anise is actually a conifer tree.
00:12:39
Speaker
of all things is where it comes from. Really? Yep, it's a pod from a conifer tree.
Absinthe's Journey to America
00:12:48
Speaker
The crazy thing was talking to people whose job it is to deal with botanicals.
00:12:56
Speaker
I was like, do you have a niece? Yeah, sure. Here. No, that's star anise. I want anise seed or anise. Like, wait, it's not the same thing. No, no, little seeds. So many people didn't know, dude, I couldn't find it in New Zealand. It was so hard to get in New Zealand. You tracked down eventually, but yeah, it was not an easy, easy task.
00:13:14
Speaker
And even finding it here too is, truthfully Jesse, finding high quality green anise is kind of a pain. Like to really get good stuff, you almost have to import from Europe. There's really almost no way around it. Yeah, crazy. All right. I'm glad you got to try this. Yeah. I'm glad that I...
00:13:37
Speaker
somewhat got the idea that you'd feel like step number one, Jesse, would be to make sure that you actually use all the ingredients. You know, that happens. That's the one thing that you could actually do, Jesse. I don't know what I did. I just I kept on that one.
00:13:53
Speaker
But what we wanted to do for this podcast was kind of follow the chronological story of Absinthe through. And the idea will be that we'll make this podcast and then I'll go and have another style of Absinthe to attempt making it home as well. Absolutely. So what's like we go kind of from the 1700s.
00:14:16
Speaker
Where do we get to in terms of history after, like, where we left off last time? What's the next sort of part of the story, I guess you'd say? So the next big thing would probably be, let's say, we touched on, you know, early commercialization in the early 1800s on the last episode. The next sort of... That's right where we left off, yeah. Right. The next big era would be sort of the 1850s, right? This is a period when you have
00:14:42
Speaker
A lot of soldiers going to Africa and coming back from Africa with a real taste for absinthe in France because they're using it to, of course, sanitize their water to some degree. So they're actually being given absinthe, much like in England they gave gin as a military ration.
00:14:58
Speaker
to basically use to sterilize their water. And that creates a huge sort of appetite amongst these veterans when they come back home, right? They've been out in the desert drinking absinthe, which honestly sounds pretty damn glorious to me, I'm not going to lie, for a number of years. And now they're coming back and they were shooting at you. No, maybe not, maybe not. But I'm sure an elephant seems more interesting if you're drinking absinthe anyway.
00:15:27
Speaker
Nonetheless, they bring that taste back and they seem to start developing absence in the direction of something more for mass consumption around the same period, although it doesn't really blossom until you get into that bell epoch period. But they start changing the production practices quite a bit around this time. And one of the main things they do is they pull some of the bittering agents back a little bit.
00:15:49
Speaker
And they sort of start to go in this almost i think of it as almost like a more pastry sort of direction right they start to really really push green anise to the forefront. And then maybe use fennel to give a little character that green anise and so what you see is the amounts that you have. Where is in the early stuff that you see in the late seventeen hundred you'll see these huge amounts of wormwood you know hundred and.
00:16:10
Speaker
20, 130, 140 grams per gallon of wormwood. That sort of gets back down to like sometimes the 90 to maybe 100 grams of wormwood. And then they start really hitting the green anise at like 200, 250 grams per gallon of green anise and similar amounts of fennel. And that really sweetens up the drink of its own accord. And it sort of becomes a cafe culture sort of thing, right? It's already even though...
00:16:40
Speaker
Even though the wine hasn't went away in France yet it's going to go away in short order but this is already a thing and cafes particular things are being.
Cultural Significance of Absinthe
00:16:49
Speaker
paired with absinthe, various different types of sweet breads and things of that nature. And you can even see this amongst the sort of paraphernalia that comes along with absinthe too. So you come from the early period up until right before the bell epoch and you don't really have the fountain culture that you're familiar with, the absinthe fountain and the Pontelier glass like this deal. You have more of a
00:17:14
Speaker
a saucer and a coupe glass, and then I can't even remember what they call them, but they're this interesting sort of, I think they call them a carafe. It's kind of an interesting vase with various levels of different rings on it that measures out water, right? And so instead of having the fount, you actually have this little vase and you're measuring it out.
00:17:35
Speaker
And then once you get into this sort of, um, cafe period, now you start to see like the absence service become a little bit more intricate. The rituals become a little bit more intricate. Um, I suspect it's actually probably around this time that serving with sugar becomes a little bit more common, especially in France, because if you go to the Swiss Alps region, um, even in antiquity, they often didn't serve with sugar.
00:18:01
Speaker
And i think that is a very uniquely sort of belly park i'm sure people doing it before them i think it becomes a little more widespread in the belly park so to speak is this kind of just the commercialization of it you think it's like we've got the stuffs like forty percent of our customers like it but if we offer.
00:18:20
Speaker
If we make it bougie and fancy with all this cool shit, here's an ornate spoon to stick your sugar cube on. Oh, and by the way, there's a little bit too crazy for you. Put some sugar in it. That'll help medicine go down. It's just, it's broadening the clientele base.
00:18:35
Speaker
That's very much what you're seeing all the way down to a lot of the cafes would actually have their own glasses and saucers and their own designs of spoons made specifically for their brands. You also see the production of absinthe not only change in terms of the botanicals, but you see it become a lot more commercial. You'll start seeing stills that are made specifically for absinthe production. They are basically pot stills, but they have a number of options on them.
00:19:05
Speaker
You'll go from a simple pot still over to sort of a system that is a pot still with what's called a boil ball on it which is kind of a rectification device to raise the proof in the purity you'll see specifically these little kind of copper irons that they use for maturation of the various botanicals and then you start to see these grades of absinthe get created right.
Techniques in Absinthe Distillation
00:19:28
Speaker
as it becomes more and more popular as you've seen you're using a ton of botanicals to make an absent. No matter how simply you're using a ton of botanicals. So they can you know there's a lot of alcohol left those botanicals and so that becomes how can we how can we commercially reclaim that alcohol what can be done with it what is an absent superior versus an absent ordinary and various different lower grades of absent all the way down to
00:19:54
Speaker
Rectifying those botanicals with another distillation pulling all that stuff out and using it for a different grade of absence so. So is it this sort of almost like party guy or brewing have you come across party girl brewing. I have now when you're making a beer if you're making it you're trying to make it do a big quite huge beer. That's over one point one gravity. Yeah.
00:20:18
Speaker
You don't slaughter it, you don't sparge it because that'll drop the gravity of the beer you want. So you just pull out the first runnings and turn that into your 14% stout. But then you do sparge it and then take all the runnings off and turn that into a small beer.
00:20:35
Speaker
Typically what they would do is they would remember how on the in the first episode we talked about you sort of had these two sort of sections of tails. You have what they actually referred to as tails, which is alcohol that they considered of a kind of an inferior quality that they would redistill. And then you had the blanket, which is where the real oily stuff is you want to put back into the distillation. They would hold on to that first tails between, say, 120 proof down to maybe down to 80 proof. And sometimes they would re-rectify it.
00:21:02
Speaker
More often than not, they would just put it in with those old herbs and old botanicals and try to rectify everything in one go, essentially. And it really was a matter of making it as cheap as you possibly could. And then like a superior or different producers looked at it different ways.
00:21:20
Speaker
So some of the producers would look at a superior as being exactly kind of what you did, but with the up botanicals, right? So double pot still distillation of a brandy based spirit and then not adding any Blanchette back to it.
00:21:35
Speaker
other producers would specifically add the blanket back to it and call that a superior one. But you ended up basically with as many sometimes as four or five categories of absinthe coming from the same producers. And then of course, with that, you also have a lot of people that move in with dubious intent, as it were, making just terrible, terrible concoctions. One of my
00:22:00
Speaker
One of my favorite stories to tell about absinthe that does lend into the mystery of it and can potentially lend into some of the rumors and you know, innuendo about absinthe is a lot of these really low end guys that weren't really making absinthe. They're not only just using, you know, essential oils to add back into it to give it some flavor, but to give it color, they're using copper
Historical Myths and Decline of Absinthe
00:22:19
Speaker
sulfate. They're literally buying the copper sulfate that they're cleaning out of stills and adding that to
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So conference, a heavy metal, as we all know, you know, good times for everybody. Yeah. Uh, that could account for some of the absence that makes people crazy. Yeah. And that was probably, probably the least suspicious thing that I've seen from those producers in particular. I mean, there were some really bad stuff. Yeah. What's the worst you can think of offhand?
00:22:51
Speaker
Uh, well, there's a lot of stories of people taking at that time, even then, uh, methylated industrial spirits, like what they were doing during prohibition here in the United States and trying to, uh, de-methylate them to whatever degree that they, they think that they can, if they even bothered to do anything to it. I suspect that they were just buying wood alcohol and going directly into the vats. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you start to see a lot of parallels in that time period.
00:23:21
Speaker
If you really wanted to vilify Absinthe, that's what they would have focused on is those spurious producers. Because you start to see a lot of parallels in that time period in France to the gin craze in London as well. It's not far off in that time period, especially once Phylloxera comes in and starts wiping out the wine grapes in France.
00:23:39
Speaker
Then you've got a bunch of cafe owners that really lean into absinthe because, you know, they've got happy hour there, just like they do anywhere else. It's five o'clock. You come get you a glass of fortified wine, you know, maybe a cup of coffee. Well, the wine's gone. What's the closest thing that we got to wine? Well, it takes some absinthe and pour some water in it and luch it down and it becomes 14% alcohol or so. And it's sweet and you can add sugar to it if you want to. Um, and so it becomes very much so a cultural phenomenon at that point, particularly once
00:24:06
Speaker
Once it gets a little bit trendy and hip, you know, and the writers and the artists start leaning into it. That's when it, it really becomes a whole thing that the wine industry later has to try to destroy. So you've kind of got this perfect storm of there's this drink that's early building up almost like religion about it. There's, there's ceremony that goes into it. There's significant like signifying
00:24:31
Speaker
culture around it, there's iconography around it, it has this kind of mystic past.
00:24:38
Speaker
going all the way back to the hedge, which is and stuff. Now it's making its way into cafe culture, but hey, presto change. I suddenly, the wine's gone, right? And everyone still wants to get fucked up. And the cafe owners still want to make money. And on top of that, the, uh, the most trendy people, the eccentric artists in society are starting to latch onto it as the specific drug of choice. Um,
00:25:09
Speaker
All of that just makes it boom, like it just takes off. Is that about, am I understanding this correctly? Absolutely. Yeah. And by that time period too, the other part of it is because France was sort of such a kind of trendsetter by the 1880s. Now you're really starting to see it seep into other countries' cultures, right? So it becomes a thing in America, the absent house in particular in New Orleans.
00:25:37
Speaker
It's actually, I talked to, uh, I'm trying to remember a name. I talked to her last night on distillers talk. Mariel, I cannot think of her last name, but she just wrote a book called the absinthe frappe, which was all about how the, yeah, the absinthe frappe was created at the absent house in New Orleans. I had no idea that that's where it came from. It seems like such a French sort of thing in general that you would not have even, even given, you know, the, uh, the connection there, obviously you would have thought that that would have been directly out of France as opposed to something from the United States. So.
00:26:04
Speaker
I'm completely unfamiliar with whatever it was you just said. Yeah, so basically, my understanding of it is basically you make a frappe coffee and then you add absinthe to it, right? So it's basically a coffee and absinthe cocktail. Yeah, it sounds wonderful. It sounds fantastic.
00:26:24
Speaker
Dude, yeah, that sounds awesome. So is it an iced product? I believe so. I would have to look and see for sure, but yeah, that's something I don't know as much about the cocktail side of things is what I should. I just, I do know the Absinthe House pretty well because it's a very famous place, but right. Yeah. What was the cocktail called again, sir? The Absinthe Frappe.
00:26:48
Speaker
Oh, okay. Right. My Hoosier gets in a way of certain work. I told you, take that cornbread out before you get on the podcast. I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm the same. I'm the same guy that made an absence from a corn base for shits and giggles. So yeah, dude. Now that's so cool. I could totally get on board with that. Uh, I've tried crapper and coffee.
00:27:10
Speaker
That was pretty dope. And I kind of get the feeling it's, it's totally not the same, but somehow kind of the same, like Grappa in absinthe, some, I don't know. I can't explain it, but there seems to be some similarity there to me in terms of flavor profile. In particular with a dark coffee of any kind, I think even without any cream or anything, uh, just that, that bittering idea versus especially a bell epoch style absent and having that a nice at the forefront to build that contrast. Um,
00:27:37
Speaker
You do some really cool stuff. So I do know that a lot of the cocktail books, the famous cocktail books of antiquity in the United States, they are filled with pages and pages of absent cocktails from that time period. And it seems to very much so be that in high society, if you were going to have a fancy cocktail, the chances are it's either going to be a brandy base or an absence based cocktail.
00:28:05
Speaker
at around the same time, like late 1880s. Interesting. So in terms of like recipe and product, if you picked up a glass of bell epoch, absinthe, what is it? Is it just that insane amount of anise and fennel that really kind of categorizes it, you think?
00:28:29
Speaker
Very much so, yeah. A little bit, again, more restrained on sort of the bittering elements. Tends to be very anise forward sometimes. Well, and very heavy on mouthfeel. I mean, very, very heavy on mouthfeel. It almost borders on milky.
00:28:48
Speaker
Legitimately as far as the mouth goes watch what you lose it down and they did that a number of ways one of them of course was. Licorice roots actually in the in the pot but the other way that i'm more commonly have seen during that time period was that they would make a.
00:29:04
Speaker
uh, like a licorice root extract, like a liquid that they would add in before distillation, um, to really get that. And of course, the more licorice root you have to the more, uh, the more of a luch that you'll get from the product as well, because that really helps with the oil content there. And that's bumping up that sweetness too. Like licorice root always tastes kind of like devia to me. Yes.
00:29:24
Speaker
sweet but not sugar, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, so I can definitely see that getting real, like anise, phenol. Were they using star anise then or no? Some of them were. You will find star anise in some of the traditional French absence. When you do find it, it tends to be, you think of it almost like a flavoring grain when you're making a whisky, right? It tends to be a little bit more restrained.
00:29:48
Speaker
And it's a little bit more there just for contrast. The other one that you'll find commonly in small amounts would be grains of paradise. And we're talking very, very small amounts of grains of paradise, less than a gram per gallon, to bring a little bit of a spicy profile to the backside. You'll even see sometimes nutmeg, especially if you have an absinthe that has a pretty hefty proportion of mint to it. They'll use nutmeg to sort of
00:30:17
Speaker
mellow out that flavor characteristic to some degree. That would just be another thing that pushes it towards confectionery.
00:30:25
Speaker
Yeah, the Bell Epoch stuff is literally like eating a cream-filled donut of some sort. It is very much a sweet, decadent, overwhelming in some ways sort of thing. And I do like it. I don't tend to drink a lot of that style. But there are a couple of great brands out there from Jade Lacours. So the two that stand out to me are the there's a Jade
00:30:55
Speaker
Terminus Oxygen A, which is actually an oxygenated absinthe, which is traditional to, I wouldn't say traditional, but it is based on a Bell Epoch era absinthe. And then the other one would be the Jade Edouard. The Edouard out of all the Bell Epoch style stuff is by far my favorite, but it is super decadent. I mean, there's no way around it. It's a dessert in a glass with alcohol is really what it is.
00:31:25
Speaker
Okay. So if you, I'm going to put you on the spot here, dude, but how would you like, can you build a theoretical recipe for us for a bellypox style? Like what would you, what would you be doing? What sort of volumes would you be using? Absolutely. So, uh, you're going to kind of want to stay within that sort of again, that brandy base, right? That we talked about even with the earlier stuff, cause brandy base as much as possible.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, dude, I've got to jump in here and say I am insanely impressed at the flavor that came out of that.
00:32:01
Speaker
brandy that you had me make. That was crazy. And that I'm suitably impressed. So for those of you that don't know, it was basically a sugar wash with oats and raisins. And man, I wouldn't say it's brandy, but it sure as shit ain't sugar wash. Right. Right. It gives you just enough. That brandy characteristics, pull it off for sure. Um, but yeah, you're going to like softness.
00:32:25
Speaker
Again, brandy base, you know, at this point in time, typically it's going to be rectified as opposed to triple pot distilled, but if you don't have rectification capability, you know, triple pot, there's not anything wrong with that. It's going to work just fine. You're going to do 170 proof for your base alcohol for your maceration. Not looking for neutral, basically, but you are looking for some of the base character of what you're working with. Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
more or less to build off of as a backbone really is what you're doing. So all the same rules kind of applies what applied to what we did with the 1700 style. 170 proof base alcohol. You're going to macerate your botanicals in that at 145 degrees.
00:33:08
Speaker
overnight for twenty four hours and then preferably the still on the botanicals if you possibly can. Botanical wise what you're gonna be looking at is going to be somewhere around let's say ninety to a hundred grams per gallon of wormwood. You'll be looking closer to two hundred two hundred fifty maybe even three hundred grams per gallon of an yeast.
00:33:29
Speaker
150 to 250 grams per gallon of fennel. A lot of times they were using some Angelica seed. You're only looking at maybe 10 to 20 grams per gallon of Angelica seed. Occasionally you'll see an Angelica root in there. It's going to be somewhere in that kind of four to five grams per gallon. Licorice root for me typically to try to replicate a bell epoch, I'm usually right around 10 grams per gallon roughly.
00:33:53
Speaker
to sort of push that to the forefront. Anything small like the grains of paradise in particular, you're going to probably be looking at about 0.05 grams per gallon to just get some of that spiciness to come through there. You will occasionally in those bell epoch things see maybe something like maybe just a little bit of lemon peel and you're talking
00:34:16
Speaker
maybe two grams per gallon. Sometimes you'll find a recipe and here's the thing with bell epoch as long as you stay as long as you're high in east high fennel and you end up using hyssop and petite wormwood for coloring you're kind of in the bell epoch. Everything else becomes a little bit like
00:34:35
Speaker
optional or flourishes. But I'm trying to think of the more common ones I've seen. So one of the more common flourishes that I have seen is you will occasionally see something like work brain. I'll get it out here in a minute. Jasmine flour. Jasmine flour in the vapor path. Or even chamomile, not jasmine flour, I'm sorry, chamomile in the vapor path.
00:35:03
Speaker
Okay, I can see that we can see. Have you tried distilling jasmine flour? Because, dude, if that tastes the way that I hope it tastes, that would be a really interesting flavor. It's one of those you have to be careful with and not push too heavy because you can get a little perfumey. It's not nearly as bad as what lavender is on that. That's a lot of sopey, but it's kind of potpourri weirdness.
00:35:26
Speaker
The chamomile is interesting too, because the chamomile, especially in a vapor distillation, there's a really fine line, which is like, if you cross it, it goes blue cheese real fast. Oh, okay. With chamomile. And that's just the amount that you use. And that's the point where that flavor is detectable.
00:35:53
Speaker
I suspect that part of that too is, you know, going into the vapor path. Well, even if you went in the boiler, it'd be the same thing, but you know, it's only going to hold up to so much heat before the stems, you start to extract chlorophyll. So, you know, for example, if you're going to do it in the vapor path, it would be nice to have a, a valving system where you could close that off after a small amount of time to keep from getting some of that stewed botanical sort of characteristic. Yeah, cool. Okay. So basically we're making a,
00:36:23
Speaker
a brandy base with a buttload of anise, a little bit of bittering, and then whatever else you want to throw in there doesn't really matter that much because it's just belittled by the pure amount of anise.
00:36:41
Speaker
The, the other alternative to would be instead of a Brandy base. So for like later bell epoch, once Philoxera hits, of course, Brandy becomes a, you know, it becomes a rarity in the first place. Um, the other option would be a sugar wash made from beach sugar because, and then make basically a one 70 out of that. So beach sugar becomes this, this is the whole Napoleon thing. Napoleon's trying to get.
00:37:08
Speaker
Was it Napoleon? Right. Am I just pulling things out of my ass here? Like he wanted to, he wanted to be independent from right. Like we talked about this. I feel like this came up when I was talking to, um, uh, Matt Patrick in terms of rum was like a big part of that history. Well, that makes, that makes sense relying on sugar cane and one of their own, their own sugar sauce.
00:37:37
Speaker
And in the Val d'etrevers in particular, just north of France, sugar beets grow everywhere. So they would have had access to that, obviously, even when they didn't have brandy. And that's what you'll start to see when you move into the Swiss Alps, when you get into the Blanche style a little later on, as it becomes a little bit more based on industrial alcohol from sugar beet, basically.
00:38:03
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. So, so once that's once alcohol from sugar beet starts becoming available and Greg start getting messed up in France, obviously there's going to be a switch at some point in time there. I have never distilled sugar beet. Is there a real flavor contribution from it or is it more pretty much just like a sugar wash? So for me, I should say.
00:38:32
Speaker
That's been the only experience I've really had with sugar beet is refined sugar from sugar beet. I would say that there is a slight difference between it and cane sugar.
00:38:45
Speaker
So, you know, the sugar bowl effect that you comment on versus inverting sugar, right? Grandma sugar bowl, that kind of heat that you get off of cane sugar, you'll get that off of beet sugar as well, but you'll also get kind of this round, flat earthiness is the best way to sand. Okay. Yeah.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah. Cause the, the sugar bowl thing for me, it's like, there is the mouth feel as well, but it's just, it's the smell of sugar. Like it's so hard to put you in, put a, put a pin on what it is because I guess we're just so trained to think of table sugar as we eat full stop being distillery, but it's not like there's something else in there and it's kind of, I don't know, man, like it's, it's kind of almost
00:39:38
Speaker
floral in a way. Yes. Yeah. No, you're not wrong. It's almost like Jasmine rice sort of thing. There's a little bit of that that goes on. It's not. Yeah. Yes. That's it dude. Jasmine rice. That is about the closest I've ever got. Yeah. I can see that. It's like the smell of smelling sugar and it's cut. Yeah. It's like Jasmine rice with Stevia on top. Yep. And if you do the sugar,
00:40:01
Speaker
If you do the sugar beet thing too, you'll, you'll have the, you'll have the same problem trying to describe it. Cause you'll be like, it's not different, but, but it's different enough that you can tell that there's something like, cause in moonshiners, like American moonshiners, like old school moonshiners, they get like.
00:40:16
Speaker
Super fucking particular about whether or not it's cane sugar or it's beach sugar all the way down the i even know even myself in the past there's certain like sugar shine recipes that i would do with beach sugar and certain ones that i would do with cane sugar. But i know that since corona it's gotten used to be able to find beach sugar of its own court every brand made beach sugar and made rock and sugar. Now it's a little more murky.
00:40:42
Speaker
Right. A lot of them are blending the two together. And I don't know how it is for the rest of the world. So I don't think I've seen beet sugar. I don't think we get it in New Zealand. I'll have to go looking after talking about this, but I, so the closest thing that I can think of when you say that rounded slightly earthy, I'm just thinking of roasted beetroot. Yeah. That sounds pretty similar to that. Like it's not quite umami. It's not quite mushroomy.
00:41:12
Speaker
It, it's earthy, but not like chewing on soil. I can get right. Anyway, sorry. I've distracted you from the, which was, you know how I am. I'll talk all night. I don't care. Um, okay. I think you pretty much outlined the, um, the, the recipe there. You mentioned way back, well, 20 minutes ago or something, a boil ball. Is that, did I hear that correctly?
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah. Is that an expansion chamber or is there like active reflux happening here or what's the story? So I, and to be, to be honest with you on this one, this one is one that I don't know as much about as what I should, because having looked at illustrations of it and heard how they run, I'm still not entirely sure that I understand how they run. But the gist of it is that instead of things,
00:42:07
Speaker
I was going to say, maybe it's one of those things where it was a little bit of a little bit of bro science. They were like, yeah, this totally works, but we know enough to know that it didn't really work.
00:42:20
Speaker
I suspect that that's the case and I suspect that if you got someone like and love him to death but if you got like Ted bro from Jade absent on here like he would swear by it because it's his thing. Right. Right. So basically the way it works is kind of like a definator but it doesn't set over top of the pot. It actually sets more or less at the end of the line arm right before the condenser.
00:42:46
Speaker
And the principle of it is that it's literally a ball of copper. There is a little area that is hollow that runs around the outside of it. And then there's a hollow that goes through the middle. The hollow that goes through the middle takes the absinthe vapor onto the condenser. The hollow on the outside
00:43:09
Speaker
The inside of that has water in it. It condenses the heavier compounds, and then there's a drain caulk that you open, and it drains back over to the still. So it's a rectifying mechanism, but it's not located where it would really make a whole lot of sense, in my opinion. But now I have heard... And how are the vipers?
00:43:32
Speaker
Like I'm a heavy vapor, so I go to the outside. That seems a bit strange to me. That's my thinking on it as well. And I don't, that's where I don't exactly understand.
00:43:43
Speaker
the principle of it, having not ever operated one myself, but just seeing images of, now I'm sure somebody's going to listen to this and there's going to be somebody out there that's like this fucking idiot, right? And there's going to be an illustration. Uh, but the one thing I could think of is that it would act almost like a centrifuge in that you'd have vapor going straight through like this. And then you'd have eddies of vapor kind of spiraling off the side.
00:44:12
Speaker
Does that make sense? It makes sense, but it's not designed that way. There's lots of examples of that too, right? Like in terms of
00:44:27
Speaker
we did something just for the hell of it or because that was the only option we had and it just turned out to work. Not for the reasons we thought it worked, but. And my understanding of it is that what they were using that for in principle, it does make sense. So what they were using it for was when they started to get down towards about say 120 proof, which is where traditionally you would cut to your
00:44:51
Speaker
Tails and absinthe. They would basically kick that thing up in order to rectify a little bit more and be able to pull a little bit more off of the still essentially. So they're using it very much so like a deflamator from my understanding of it. I'm trying to see if I can find a picture of it. Yeah, I'm looking. I'm looking in all like I keep getting just pictures of onions or helmets or whatever you want to call them.
00:45:20
Speaker
Right. Uh, I will find one and send it to you though. Cause any other time if I had my books down here, they'd be right there. Even just looking up absence, but yeah, we'll find one.
00:45:36
Speaker
But yeah, that's very much what they're using it for, basically, is to be able to up for a few more proof points, basically keep those heavier congeners from coming across and kind of rectify those a little bit so you don't drop into that kind of vegetative weirdness in that early tales. That's pretty cool. So at this stage, we're now kind of near the end of the 1800s?
00:45:58
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And this is where you start this. Yeah. And this is where Verde becomes all. Yeah. This is all still green absent for the most layman's teams, right? Yeah. Okay. Yep. Um, but that to change.
00:46:13
Speaker
And is that the thing that like one of the main points that kind of ends the Bell Epoch period? So what's the end of it? So Absinthe kind of continued even after Bell Epoch, you know, it starts really, really gaining attention as far as getting bands starting around 1909, if I'm remembering correctly, and every country kind of came to the band at different times.
00:46:38
Speaker
So the Verde Absence is still very popular at that time period. Val de Traverse always had their absence tradition. It never went away. It always stayed local and was quite a bit different. And I'm still, from a historic perspective, I'm not entirely sure if the Val was always, if they, I know that they were making Verde Absence, but I also suspect that they had a tradition of just making Swiss Blanche style absence early on as well.
00:47:04
Speaker
But but you do start to see once that band hits of course if you're an absent distiller Anywhere when the band hits and you want to keep making absent you're going to have to do it illegally And so one of the easy ways that absent is identified is with that green coloration Now you do see some variations here and there that are still legal So in Spain you end up with a rogue absent the red absent in particular That's really the only real historic red absent producer that I know of But most places it's going to become
00:47:34
Speaker
a clear liquor because it's not illegal to distill, it's just illegal to distill absinthe. And particularly in the Valdez traverse, in the Swiss Alps, those people were not going to give up that tradition. Absinthe, their life's to some degree centered around absinthe and absinthe production, you know, all the way down to their cafes, just like in France. And it was a much older tradition for them than it was for a lot of France as well. So
00:48:02
Speaker
You see interesting things happen once the ban hits the Swiss Alps. One of the common threads is a lot of people do become moonshineers, just like when prohibition hits in the United States. One of the things that you'll see is that on a local level, from local authorities even, they might wink and nod and grant someone the ability to
00:48:25
Speaker
make and sell absent locally as long as it wasn't being distributed far and wide where someone of a higher political position might catch on to it happening. All the way down to some of the producers that modern Swiss producers were able to get their permits despite having produced illegally.
00:48:46
Speaker
if they were able to prove that the alcohol they bought to make their absent had taxes paid on it. So a lot of the underground producers would literally go to the pharmacies and buy again that industrial grade sugar beet based alcohol. So they're still paying the taxes on the alcohol.
00:49:04
Speaker
Maybe it would be smart to back up here and we've referenced the issue with grapes a couple of times. I think maybe it'll be smart to go back there and really talk about what happened, why it was so important in that part of the world. Because as I understand it, that's kind of what, that's the beginning of the story for Absinthe becoming illegal in a lot of ways, right?
00:49:30
Speaker
Very much so. It was a kind of a marketing, a negative PR campaign from the winemakers in France to get Absinthe outlawed very much so because once the grapes start to make their comeback, their marketplace has been displaced by Absinthe in the cafes and amongst most drinkers as well.
00:49:51
Speaker
Instead of trying to win that market share back the hard way, it was much easier to try to demonize Absinthe to the best of their possible abilities. Let's go all the way back and what happened to the grapes in France?
00:50:10
Speaker
So, one of the main things that happened was they were importing some various types of grape vines from the United States, in particular, for some hybridization work. And they ended up with phylloxera, which is caused by, I believe it's a type of root mite.
00:50:28
Speaker
It's a disease that more or less wipes out the grapes i mean literally within weeks you had entire huge hectare vineyards just wilting up and dying off in france in a major way and of course you know this is their. This is their version of a farm distiller weather distilling or just making wine farm winery whatever you want to say so it's their livelihood and that livelihood is going away of course at that time you also had large wine houses that had been in existence in france for.
00:50:56
Speaker
You know generations, you know, they're not going to go out easy if they don't have to But it was a number of years before They figured out how to work their way around this disease actually ironically using genetics From from Texas and our friends are
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so that's where their story comes from. Um, and then of course, once they get those, uh, those philosophy resistant root stocks in, well, then you still have to grow to the vines. So you're still looking at another five, six, seven years before you have harvests that are, that are worthwhile. How soul destroying would that have been for those?
00:51:39
Speaker
The people on these farms, like, yeah, I'm the sixth generation. My grandfather's grandfather put these vines in the ground or whatever. And I'm the guy who let them die. Let them die. And now we can't make it. Right. That would have just been horrific. We had a, we had a
00:52:00
Speaker
Yeah. We had a, we had a Williams pair that was on the farm and it had probably been there for 75 years. And, and of course, once I inherited the farm, it got hit by a fire blight and died overnight. And that was one tree. And I wanted to cry over that damn flat. So, but
00:52:15
Speaker
So you can imagine an entire vineyard. But nonetheless, once they get this wine industry back up and going, they got to get their marketplace back. And the only way to do that is to displace the one thing that is giving them a run for their money, which is absent. You got to get back in the cafes. You got to be on premise and off premise, just like nowadays. So the easy way to do that was to vilify absent to the best of your ability and lean into this sort of
00:52:43
Speaker
I don't even know exactly how the hallucinogenic aspect of alpha thujone really got started. It can cause seizures and high dosages, but it's not hallucinogenic in any way, shape, or form. As a matter of fact, you can go to a store and buy sage oil, and it's got more alpha thujone in it than what any commercial absinthe ever has had in it, and that's completely legal.
00:53:07
Speaker
But they lean into Alpha Thujone, which is a component of Grand Wormwood being highly hallucinogenic. And basically they find every horror story that they possibly can throughout the land that involves anything and anything that could potentially involve someone drinking Absinthe and doing something horrific. They make it all about Absinthe at that point, all the way down to a set of murders in Switzerland and the Swiss Alps that
00:53:37
Speaker
basically centered around a gentleman killing his family, his wife and his child, that they tried to say was the result of him drinking absinthe. And according to even witnesses, he'd drink like one glass of absinthe, but he'd drink nothing but wine and beer and any other spirit he could possibly get a hold of for a two-day period before he finally snapped and murdered them. But that's the sort of thing that you do when you, I've got a big problem in my life. I'm going on a two-day bender.
00:54:07
Speaker
like jacked up before he even starts drinking. But it was absent. The last thing he drank was absent the devil liquid.
00:54:16
Speaker
What's what's funny is is and they didn't do it on purpose and of course they were successful with getting the band passed, but a lot of them. The negative marketing that they did against absence at that time. Twofold got it, you know, in the long run it backfired on him because that's what made people still interested in absent. They would see all these crazy standards. And some of the some of the producers even leaned into it. Some of the producers would make.
00:54:43
Speaker
You know these these absence promotional posters that leaned into that mythology just as heavy as the wine industry was leaning into it because they were going to make every dime off of it they possibly could before they had to close their doors.
00:54:55
Speaker
Right, right. Dude, the video that I published in 2023, it's like one of the more successful videos I've put out in ages and viewership over time is ticking away wonderfully. And in the moment I mentioned, yeah, this isn't actually going to make you trip balls.
00:55:13
Speaker
Viewership goes wompf. Right. So people are still thinking the same thing now. So of course, for those of you listening to this podcast, I'm going to steer into that pretty heavily in the next video I make. Yay, YouTube retention graphs.
00:55:32
Speaker
You can also you have the ability to get away with some things that I normally couldn't get away with. So before I even say them, I'll say that I'm saying these things as not a representative of spirits of French lick at this one moment. There are no hallucinogenic effects from absence. No, but there are.
00:55:51
Speaker
Certain of the botanicals, even after distillation, do have psychotropic effects, which affect the clarity that you have despite the fact that you're inebriated. You're drunk, but it's a different kind of drunk than it would be if you were drinking whiskey or brandy or something of that nature, which is why the bohemians and the artists and the writers loved it so much because they could still have a couple of drinks and be functional and produce terrific art and terrific writings.
00:56:18
Speaker
Um, but I am not allowed to say that as a craft producer. So I'm now stepping back in the spirits of French lick. Is there, is there like white papers or studies on this? Like what's the, is there a functional chemical that we know about or is it just kind of, um, documented that you feel like this after drinking absinthe? Do we know what's going on there?
00:56:41
Speaker
It's mostly folk medicine sort of stuff. I'm sure there have been white papers and things of that nature written in the past too, but like even just common things. So for example, the chamomile thing, right? Chamomile tea is a huge thing. You know, you want to go to sleep, you drink some chamomile tea. Anise, the word anesthetic is derived from anise and that's why you get that kind of tingling, numbing sort of characteristic on your tongue when you're drinking.
00:57:06
Speaker
Nutmeg had, nutmeg, you have to be careful with nutmeg and distillation anyways, but it does have some potentially, and you're talking huge doses here, so don't get me wrong people, don't be throwing a bunch of nutmeg in absence, but there are some potentially slightly hallucinogenic effects from nutmeg.
00:57:23
Speaker
Your licorice root is a VASCO restrictor so it could potentially raise blood pressure a little bit which might have some some interesting effects as well so.
00:57:40
Speaker
Okay, interesting. I have yet to really experience this. So I feel like there's only one thing that I need to do. Well, there's 110% maximum effort. So the end of the next video is going to be going, maybe trying to figure out whether I'm lucid or not while being inebriated, I guess.
00:58:06
Speaker
So I've learned in my years of doing Distillers Talk podcast and various other things that Well Made Absinthe about four glasses is the kind of happy point. Like three glasses is really good. Don't get me wrong. Four glasses is grand and five glasses is way too much. Before glasses. When you say glasses, do you mean like standard drinks or what kind of- Yeah, like-
00:58:36
Speaker
Like a looshed fontelier. So like, uh, what is it? An ounce, whatever. And then looshed down with water, basically. So, um, also, I feel I have a fairly high ABV tolerance at this point being a distiller too. So that might be a bit much for some. So yeah. Yeah. It's crazy how that happens. And when you mention it, it's so often comes off. I just put it in the.
00:59:01
Speaker
One of the latest videos I did, I realized I'm sitting there tasting like 90% spirit coming off the spout and just sticking it in my tongue. And yeah, it sounds like such a, a macho, like, Oh, look at me. I like hotter hot sauce than you kind of thing.
00:59:19
Speaker
but it just sneaks up on you, dude. And I've realized, I've realized that I think what happens is even now just thinking about it, like the emotion of pretending to put a finger under the spout is making me salivate. And I think what happens is that you get used to it and you're like, Oh, this Bernie. So I better like what up a bunch of spit in my mouth.
00:59:39
Speaker
You do. And to be clear here too, because I don't want to send anybody down the wrong path. So I am drinking, of course, your absinthe this evening. But in the industry, that is a real problem amongst distillers and something distillers don't talk about. But because we have to do so many tastings and things of that nature, it's easy to get down that little rabbit hole. And I've found myself since the past two months,
01:00:01
Speaker
I have laid off majorly from imbibing because after being in the industry for nine years, you suddenly realize this is not sustainable for the rest of your life. It's not. There's no way. And I have enough bad habits. Well, and the problem for a lot of people, too, is that the reason they get into it is because they love it. They love nothing more than coming home at the end of the day and having two glasses of whiskey
01:00:28
Speaker
on average, whatever, you know, like that's the same as having two glasses of wine. It's probably drinking a little bit more than you should be speaking for your health, but it's not like you have a problem. And then suddenly you have a job at a distillery and it turns out that you don't even realize it, but you're on average drinking between two and 12 glasses a day. And then you're coming home at night and having your two glasses and you never actually
01:00:56
Speaker
fully drunk, right? Perpetually slightly buzzed. And that's dangerous, man.
Absinthe Culture and Underground Production
01:01:04
Speaker
That's, you don't want to be in that spot.
01:01:05
Speaker
That's where I caught myself was doing like, uh, doing tastings, um, you know, for different bourbon clubs and stuff. We do, you know, fly to five Bourbons and you'd be, people would be talking to you and you'd catch them slurring and you'd be like, uh, why am I not, uh, the, the effect is not the same here as it is for you. And that might be a problem. So, but, and then you also get tired of feeling bad too. So.
01:01:32
Speaker
But yeah, it's funny man. I don't know when, but at some point in time through this, like through getting into spirits more and more, I just hit a point too, where drinking for drinking sake is no longer the same thing. It's almost like it's a pain in the ass. You know, like don't know. I want to be able to like, I need work. I need to drink this for work.
01:01:57
Speaker
but I need a clear head so I can talk to the camera or run the machinery or talk to the customer or whatever. And suddenly there's a switch in your head that flips and there's no longer that same association with just drinking for the sake of drinking. It's gone. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun. Sometimes when you're with a couple of buddies and you want to cut loose. But even that's kind of hard because now it's sort of like you're so used to dissecting and pulling spirits apart.
01:02:25
Speaker
It becomes a little less enjoyable. You can't just forget about it, right? You can't just put the stuff in your mouth and go, yum. Well, that's one of the reasons I really got into Absinthe Jesse too. This is something I don't know that we touched on last time, but I'll touch on it real quick. One of the reasons I got into it is because it is such a high level distillation, right? Like we talked about distillers thesis and all that stuff. But there's also, I think maybe because of that high level of
01:02:53
Speaker
of distillation that goes into it. I tend to have a respect for it that I might not have for other spirits, A and B. I tend to have a little, a little, there's almost a little spirituality around it for me to some degree. The other bonus, the other bonus was I found that I could have those, those four glasses of absinthe and not have a hangover the next day. So, you know, when you're working at a distillery, not having a hangover is pretty important.
01:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, it makes sense. If you've got, uh, 12 Budweisers sitting in a cooler, you're going to think about those differently than that one bottle of 14% Imperial Stout that cost you the same amount as the 12 Budweisers. You're going to respect one, then you're going to slam the other. And horses for courses, I'm not bearest or spiritist, but, um, yeah.
01:03:49
Speaker
but different. All right, dude. So, so it's this, it's this, uh,
01:03:55
Speaker
drive to demonize and marginalize absinthe that literally beats the color out of it and makes it a white spirit. So you can walk down the street with a bottle of booze in your hand. That's legal. It's a, it's a whole lot of effort for the, for the copper to stop you and say, Hey, I want to sniff your drink as opposed to do that's green. Can you not like, I don't want to do this. Don't make me do this to you, but it's green. I have to pull you like, I have to take you out of this.
01:04:23
Speaker
You're being obvious about it, right? You're flaunting it. That is going to obviously lead to a change in production, a change in flavor profile. Where does this go? What are the main changes going into the Swiss Blanche? Is that what we're hitting now?
01:04:43
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. So the main real change, obviously, is the color. That's part of it. But another part of it is that in the Val de Traverza region in particular, the super sweet thing didn't really necessarily ever catch on in the first place, although the Verde absent did. And I'll throw this out there as an aside as well, because there are two other
01:05:07
Speaker
Not very well detailed bootlegging regions for Absinthe after the band hits France. So a lot of the French distillers went to either the Caribbean or South America. We do know that there was Absinthe that was being produced in Cuba from a rum base.
01:05:26
Speaker
Um, we know for sure it's supposedly wasn't a very good absent, but it was being made in Cuba from a rum base. And I've heard both Koshasa and Pisco were used for absent and South America as well. So, um, wait, that's Koshasa. I don't know if I know that.
01:05:48
Speaker
It's like, uh, very similar to rum, agriculture. So you're basically using the sugar cane juice as opposed to refined sugar. Um, and ironically, uh, they, they typically would, uh, mature that on Amburana wood, uh, which has become a huge thing.
01:06:04
Speaker
In the past few years with brewers and distillers both so so there are there are some traditions outside of just the valley traverse. But in the valley like i said it was such a culturally relevant culturally important thing to them they were not going to let it go right they were not of the sort that we're going to the cafe necessarily to have a glass of wine even long before the belly park they're going to the cafe to have whatever they're having for supper and have a glass of absent.
01:06:30
Speaker
to the extent that they had communal fountains. You would walk into some of these different cafes and they would literally have an absent fountain that might hold 10 or 15 gallons of water and have multiple spouts on it because everybody's getting together, they're talking about their day, talking about agriculture. And as I said, they really had a huge production of sugar beet in that region. So that really became the base for them for absent production even long before the ban because it was already on hand.
01:06:59
Speaker
And why would you import, you know, your wine for your brandy or even your brandy from France into the Val, if you can just produce it from whatever you have locally that grows well for you. And it's a whole lot cheaper to buy that base. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
So what you will see a lot of in the valley traverse region is going back towards that more bittering component to where you've got a higher proportion of wormwood coming back in. But they might balance that with a decent amount of anise. So you might be looking at something like 125 grams per gallon of wormwood. You might be looking somewhere around 200 grams per gallon of anise. They would typically do fennel in almost the same amounts as the anise in the valley traverse.
01:07:42
Speaker
So you're already getting a little bit more savory sort of characteristic in particular from that fennel. They would oftentimes, because a lot of the botanicals that are used in absence, such as hyssop or lemon balm, lemon balm was one I didn't mention for the Verde as well, but lemon balm was always a huge part of absence, either as coloration or
01:08:03
Speaker
distillation. And the Valdez Traverse, what you'd see, especially with the Swiss Blanche style, and they call it Blanche because, or the Le Blue style, not only because it's white, but if they refer to it as Le Blue, because it's reflecting the sky, the blue sky, even with the coloring.
01:08:20
Speaker
Just to be clear, the blue is the same as white. Like it's not slightly blue in color. It's just the only thing it reflects is what's around it. Absolutely. Absolutely. They would oftentimes even use fresh botanicals. So green botanicals, which is kind of an interesting thing.
01:08:44
Speaker
Sorry. Anyways, so they would go out to the actual mountainside and they would cut, you know, fresh wormwood and use it directly right off the mountainside quite often in certain abortions. And it's an entirely different flavor profile. You still get the bitterness, but you get kind of this freshness. Even, and it sounds weird, but almost kind of a metallic sort of note that would come to the forefront to some degree. Interesting. Some of the Swiss Blanche styles would even use
01:09:13
Speaker
And these are, I have yet to be able to source these worth of shit, but there are two, there's multiple ones of these, but there are two in particular, uh, smaller varieties of wormwood, um, that really grow basically kind of like right on the edge of the Arctic zone, right? Like they're at the tops of the mountains. Um, they call them, uh, uh, Genepi, I believe is what the kind of collective term is, uh, G E N A P I. Um,
01:09:41
Speaker
They would typically put their hyssop in the actual maceration. It wasn't being part of the coloration. Lemon balm wasn't part of the coloration, so it would go into the maceration for distillation. If they used petite wormwood, it would go into the actual maceration for distillation. Everything just sort of goes into the pot or into the vapor path instead of being used post distillation and getting any coloration from it. But very much so, a little more of a savory kind of take on absinthe. A little more
01:10:09
Speaker
restrained on the anise, but enough anise there that you get the flavor with a little more of that fennel characteristic, a little more of that wormwood coming through at the forefront. They would still use things like grains of paradise to bring some of that spiciness into it in particular.
01:10:25
Speaker
And I wouldn't say it was derivative of French-style absinthe. I would say it's actually in a lot of ways probably an earlier tradition. I think we're still a little murky historically on some of those roots of absinthe in particular. You will see a lot more
01:10:46
Speaker
roots being used in Swiss production at the time, too. So, Angelica root was common, Aorus root was common, Licorice root, of course, was common. I'm trying to think of some of the others I've heard of that were being used in it. But basically, any kind of bittering root that you could find, you would use. And it really depended a lot of times on
01:11:09
Speaker
what you had access to on your property too. They were very, very picky in particular. Yeah. So you can't be like digging an absent botanicals. Well, I've got it over there and I can dig it up and use it. No one knows.
01:11:24
Speaker
And luckily for them, grand wormwood literally grows all over the mountainside. I mean, it's everywhere of its own accord. But they would get very particular, for example, let's say with the dried wormwood. So they would build these big drying barns that were kind of similar to American style burly tobacco barns. And they would dry the wormwood and then they would actually age it.
01:11:46
Speaker
for a number of years. Sometimes two, three years. And then they were very particular about the wormwood that they were cutting even before it was aged. They kind of viewed it like grapes. If it was actually being grown, it might be best not the first year it grows or the second year it grows, but maybe after the third year. That's really when it becomes expressive of the terroir.
01:12:10
Speaker
But there were certainly plenty of guys that were doing exactly what, you know, what, what you're going to be trying to do here, which is, uh, make an absence that is functional and good. Right. And don't, don't get caught doing it. I was there. That was kind of their thing. So it sounds like it's kind of to the, like, not, not in terms of production or whatever, but just the, just in terms of the flavor that's in the glass, it's much more similar to the bellypox style.
01:12:37
Speaker
Yep. Oh, sorry. It's kind of a ramped up version of that 1700 style. And that's why I think the Swiss Blanche tradition probably, probably has some more history that we've not really uncovered and so far. So, um, because it's taken such a 180, like what bridge does it get? Why did it not evolve from the, uh, the belly park rather than the earlier?
01:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I also I've sort of sort of I've got contact with a few guys over there too and involved in absinthe and I'm of the impression that to some degree, they're a little
01:13:17
Speaker
They're a little more protective of their tradition. I know that there was a movement not long ago to try to get it kind of recognized as a geographically indicated spirit for that particular region. I don't know how far they ever got with that, but I think they've been a little more quiet and hush-hush about kind of what the history is. They're trying to preserve it as sort of their cultural heritage as well. So.
01:13:42
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that would make sense too. So when you take a drink that's popular, you force it to the ground.
01:13:51
Speaker
the people that actually care about it, and it's actually part of their culture, and it actually means something to them, rather than just looking bougie next to whatever the version of Karen was back then. You know, like Karen's doing it, so I've got it as well, keeping up with the Joneses kind of stuff. You make it illegal, all of that kind of, for want of a better word, poser sort of side of things disappears instantly. Now the people that actually care that it's part of their culture, religion, like everyday life,
01:14:22
Speaker
the other ones that are going to carry the baton, right? So I guess it kind of makes sense that the star would swing back that way. But it's also going to create a lot of just the typical, I feel like history has shown us this over and over and over again. You make something like this illegal. It doesn't make it go away. It just forces it underground. Right. And the people that were doing the right thing anyway, I just going to go hush hush and do it quietly under the radar without telling anyone.
01:14:52
Speaker
And then the bad element come along and create terrible stuff for people that want it for other reasons. And that man led exactly to that, right? Not only the Swiss Blanche thing, but even the modern revival of Absinthe unfortunately started with really bad producers in some of the old Soviet block countries that weren't making anything that looked like Absinthe or tasted like Absinthe, just terrible.
01:15:18
Speaker
artificially colored neutral grain rock gut spirit that they called absent, but it also got people's attention because they wanted to try absence. So yeah, totally man. Um, so does this whole
01:15:36
Speaker
this kind of street mythology that we have in the general public now of absence. I think we're talking about this before we record. I put a video up and the comments that come in are really interesting to me. It just seems like this giant veil of mystique that no one, like not enough people see through. So you can just say whatever you want and there's no one out there statistically speaking to call bullshit on the bullshit that you just uttered. Because there's not enough people that know better.
01:16:05
Speaker
The myths that are held now and kind of believed by whatever percentage of the population, do you think that comes from the smear campaign from the French winery? Do you think it comes from the fact that it was outlawed for so long so you couldn't talk about it openly? And then obviously the people that were producing terrible stuff and I have to assume some people died of shitty absence because of
01:16:32
Speaker
Absolutely. Is it a mix of all of the above? Where does this myth come from? It's just not true.
01:16:44
Speaker
The roots of it are definitely the wine industry. That's where that's where it starts. And then I think some of the interest, though, as well with that is pop culture. Right. So you take, for example, Bram Stoker's Dracula, there's the whole scene with the absence in that movie. I think one source that probably doesn't get enough credit amongst
01:17:07
Speaker
My generation in particular is, you know, Nine Inch Nails did a song called The Perfect Drug and the entire video is centered around both Edward Gorey artwork and an absinthe trip, right? I think that probably got a lot of, a lot of, you know, people in their, in their thirties and early forties, kind of like, Oh, well, you know, Trent Reznor was drinking absinthe and having a trip in a hedge garden. Let's go, let's go play that game. Right?
01:17:31
Speaker
Certainly, the roots started with the wineries pushing that narrative absolutely. You look at Picasso's art and it's trippy. There's an element there of that lucidity that you can, instead of looking at it as lucidity, you can look at it as, I guess, hallucinogenic or psychedelic.
01:17:56
Speaker
I think Hemingway probably had a lot to do with it as well because he wasn't really drinking until after the ban, but he was pretty famous for importing vintage bottles of Absinthe. And there's a story about him going to an illicit Absinthe producer and the Swiss Alps. And then apparently he was taking trips to Cuba from Key West to pick up Absinthe. And he wrote this little ditty about, and I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it's something about
01:18:27
Speaker
The woodworms, quote unquote, in Florida are so bad that they've eaten holes in his piano. But basically what was really happening was he was drinking absinthe and getting drunk and throwing a knife at the piano. And he says woodworms instead of wormwood to make sort of a joke of it, right? Oh, that's hilarious. Right.
Modern Absinthe and Recipe Innovations
01:18:46
Speaker
So once again, it's a continuation of this perfect storm where
01:18:50
Speaker
it was hip. People kind of remembered it. It's still sort of in the DNA of the culture. And now once again, there's prominent artists starting to steer into it. But now we've got this, let's face it, people just love stuff that you're not allowed to have, right? So it's exactly.
01:19:10
Speaker
It's it's the the pirate to fix all my before it's forbidden fruits it's a forbidden fruit for promethean fire whatever you want to call it it's all on that same category.
01:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, totally. All right, dude. So I think what I want to do is jump back a little bit and let's talk specifically about, because what I want to go out and make a Swiss Blanche style absinthe. I'll be honest with you. This, like I said at the beginning, this 1700 sort of style really takes my fancy. It's not what I thought absinthe was. I think it's freaking delicious.
01:19:50
Speaker
Maybe not this specifically, but I can totally see the potential that this kind of spirit has. And Belly Pock sounds fun and all, but it's less my kind of drink. Right. Absolutely. It's really starting to, so it's like this dialed up to 11. I love the sound of that. So what do I do the same as before? What do I change up? And we're going to use a Brandy base again. Hit me with the rhythm sticks here.
01:20:19
Speaker
So, uh, definitely keep your wormwood where it's at, uh, bump your a nice, uh, close to, I don't remember what I told you on the 17 hundreds, but definitely you want to be a nice and fennel close to 200 grams per gallon for sure. On that, um, you're definitely going to want to do at least, um, uh,
01:20:40
Speaker
Probably 10 to 20 grams per gallon of lemon balm. You're probably going to be right around 5 to 10 grams per gallon of hyssop, if you can find it. I would hit Angelica roots probably in that 5 grams per gallon range. I would hit Licorice root in the 5 grams per gallon range. Orys root, I would leave that up to you if you like that earthy thing in particular. And I know you're kind of big into those grunge-ier flavors.
01:21:08
Speaker
Right in that five grams per gallon range as a matter of fact, I would do all the roots the more roots the better We've even done and this isn't this isn't Necessarily relevant to the Swiss Blanche, but just just as an idea We've even done like dandelion root over here because we have dandelions all in our yard. So Because I tend to like that in an absence as well I would
01:21:33
Speaker
Make sure if you kept your Blanchette from your last run, I would add that back to this one for sure. And get as much oil there as what you can. That higher level of anise and that higher level of licorice root in particular are going to help you sort of push that loose just a little bit. And you're basically, that's exactly what you're doing is dialing up what you've already done with the 1700 style and making it a little more balanced and a little bit more nuanced.
01:22:03
Speaker
I wouldn't be afraid, because you will see this sometimes in Swiss style absinthe, I wouldn't be afraid to even maybe do a little bit of like lemon zest. And I would go real easy on it. I mean, you can get you can get some of that from the lemon balm, but the zest is going to be a little brighter and maybe give you some more contrast. Also, it was very rare to see this. But if you do have access to decent vanilla beans, vanilla bean or two is not going to hurt anything at all. So.
01:22:32
Speaker
Okay. So, and I imagine for both the lemon, you want to kind of brighten it, but you don't want to make it that like citrusy, you still want it to be a heavy oily spirit, not lifted in volatile. Exactly. Vanilla. I'm assuming we're talking tiny amounts to just crank up complexity. We don't want the actual kind of sweetness of vanilla coming through 100%. So, so we're talking like two or three grams of, of, of lemon.
01:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, probably. You're talking pig, pig gallon, aren't you? So like five to 10 games maybe. I don't even think he, I don't even think he need that. I would do honestly, I would really do one to two. I mean a very, very small. Okay.
01:23:17
Speaker
especially if you're going to have lemon balm in there as well. Because it's going to enhance. The other thing, whenever you make your base alcohol this time, if you kept those early tails from your absence last time, rerun those with that base alcohol too because all those oils are still setting in those early tails and you can rectify that.
01:23:38
Speaker
So, and all that stuff's going to keep upping your oil content. The big thing is always save those, always, every time, if you run this a million times, always save those early tales and use them in the rectified alcohol and always save that Blanchette and add it back right before you distill your absinthe. Because that's going to keep ramping everything up that much more over and over and over again. And you'll keep getting more and more esterification out of it.
01:24:00
Speaker
Um, so would that be, would that be not a click? Like if I was going to make the, the bell epoch style, I wouldn't want to use the blanket from a seven to hundreds because it's not craziness. Well, you, you would actually do it with all three styles. That was, that was a common thing to all three is reusing that block over and over and over again. Yep.
01:24:24
Speaker
But the, the blanket for the belly park would be belly park style blanket. So it's going to be smarter and more dizzy rather than kind of like punch in the face. Okay. Awesome. Um, and what would be traditional for that time period in terms of the base spirit, are we now back to Brandy because grapes are back on the menu or do the stick more with the, with the sugar base?
01:24:50
Speaker
They basically stayed with that sugar base, because it would have been the cheapest thing they could have gotten a hold of. And it was already going to be an expensive spirit for them to make, because while they had the wormwood there, as well as the lemon balm, the mint, et cetera, you're going to want to use mint in this too. Honestly, almost everything you did in that 1700s style that you did, I think, is also in that blanche that I sent you before recipe-wise. It's just amped up, I believe.
01:25:18
Speaker
anyways, uh, what I was saying is so it would, it would have been expensive to produce anyways, cause they would have had to bought their anise, their fennel and imported all that stuff. So it becomes, since you're a bootlegger, it becomes, well, what's the cheapest possible best alcohol that I can get that I could also potentially pay taxes on. So nobody says anything about it. So, um, and you can, yeah, you can do it with, with a cane sugar, I think. So even though that wouldn't have been traditional, but
01:25:45
Speaker
I was just kind of thinking, I'll check, I don't think I can get hold of beet sugar. Just because there's, you know, like, Australia makes a buttload of sugar cane, it would make sense for us to get that rather than bringing sugar beet from the northern hemisphere down. But I'm wondering if maybe I can kind of do a similar thing to the recipe you had and sub out the raisins for literally just some beetroot and throw it in there.
01:26:09
Speaker
That's a great idea. That would be really interesting. Or even, even barring that, even just using a little bit of the beat root and the maceration might be interesting. Yeah, right.
01:26:23
Speaker
Uh, it, it'll be a lot safer to do it in the distillation, won't it? Because it's safer in terms of flavor balance. Like I have you either mess or put beetroot in, in, in the vapor path before. Like I've got no idea whether I need that's a new one on me. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, do you think if I was going to do that, uh, I could do the same, right? Just do sugar oats, just to, to creamy it up a little bit. Yep.
01:26:52
Speaker
Absolutely. And throw some beetroot in there just to get that earthy kind of flavor. Yeah, I see no reason not to do that. Yeah. I'm excited about that. That's an interesting concept for sure. Yeah. And in some ways, it'll probably actually get more of, how do you put it? It would be easier to get more of the earthy flavor because most of that earthy flavor has been processed out by the time it's actually white granulated sugar. Right.
01:27:22
Speaker
All right. Yeah, I might do that. All right, dude. Um, the last thing I wanted to do is, uh, play a little bit of whack-a-mole with, uh, with some of these myths that pop up and maybe try and just sort of set the, uh, set the record straight a little bit. Uh, so the first one I think we've already passed on is you're going to trip balls if you drink Absinthe. Um, I think we covered off that off fairly well, right? Like, no, it's not hallucinogenic.
01:27:51
Speaker
If you want to trip balls, eat mushrooms.
01:27:53
Speaker
Yes. Yes. There are better substances. Yeah. Right. But there is potentially this kind of lucidity feeling. Um, and I've been, I've, I forgot that this is 60% and I've been drinking it like it's not, and I'm drinking it straight without water. Uh, and I'm recovering a little bit now, but I did, you're going all in with the water. I didn't want to get up and be rude.
01:28:23
Speaker
It feels almost like I did for a little while. I was sitting there in the hall while you were talking and I was like, keep up with the conversation. Keep up with the conversation. I'm back now.
01:28:37
Speaker
I drink that whole sample, I think. So, so yeah, it was good. It was good. I think that was like 80 mil sample or something. Um, maybe it was a hundred mil. I don't know, but yeah. Um, but yeah, I did. There was a very interesting, almost like body stone kind of sensation, like tingly all over that you feel like you're floating. Um, the feeling that I normally get and I am
01:29:02
Speaker
Like, it's the end of the night. I've drank way too much. And my trigger is when I start talking to myself in the mirror, you go for a piss and then you have like a conversation with yourself. You're so drunk. Why are you so drunk Jesse? Like, dude, I'm way past it at that point in time. Um, but on the, on the occasions that I have got there, you get this weird, like floaty, almost disembodied feeling. I mean, I did feel like that now. And I was, um,
01:29:26
Speaker
nowhere near inebriated enough to be incapacitated. So that was kind of interesting. I'll have to experience that some more. Gosh darn it.
01:29:38
Speaker
And wait until you start pushing those botanicals even harder, because then you're really going to see that effect big time. And it'll be interesting for you to see how that plays. Yeah, because it's the same amount of alcohol, but way more botanicals. So all of the stuff that's going to have an effect, if anything's going to have effect, is in a higher proportion to the
01:30:02
Speaker
I think we've whacked that myth mole. What are some of the others that you hear a lot that crack you up in terms of general perception of absinthe? It's not even a myth. We kind of touched on that difference between the taste of
01:30:21
Speaker
you know, green anise versus black licorice jelly bean, right? And so the big thing for me is like, how do you break people of that, right? Like, if I have people walk into the distillery and you're like, oh, I make absinthe and then they're like, well, that's cool. And then they're like, but I don't drink it because it tastes like a black jelly bean. Like, how do you?
01:30:42
Speaker
How do you break that and get them to see that that's not exactly what it tastes like? And so the easy way that I've found to do that is that in the United States, most people don't like black jelly beans, but most people like root beer. Right. And so you do an absinthe and root beer high ball and you don't get everybody, but you can break.
01:31:05
Speaker
You know, one out of three people of that black jelly bean thing with absinthe. And a lot of times I come back a few months later and like, I found that I really love that. So. Yeah. And then, cause it's so often the case, right? Where you just need an entry point. Like all the people that I've heard say, I don't like whiskey. It's like.
01:31:26
Speaker
I call bullshit. You just haven't tried enough whiskey in enough ways, right? Like it's just such a giant gamut of flavors. The same with gin. I don't like gin. I call bullshit.
01:31:39
Speaker
I think maybe you don't like tonic because I'm guessing you've had gin without tonic. Oh, maybe because that's what happened to me. I thought I didn't like gin, realized actually I didn't like tonic, discovered I love gin and now I love gin and tonic. You know, it's a weird thing. But you're right. Root beer and black jelly bean are so close in flavor.
01:32:03
Speaker
Like if you imagine like a color wheel, but a flavor wheel right next to each other, but that's totally different. This might actually make the problem worse, but I've been thinking of it. It's absinthe to me is almost more like Jagermeister than what I thought absinthe was.
01:32:26
Speaker
Not in terms of the way you drink it, not in terms of the sweetness, the liqueuriness, all of that, but just in terms of the flavor profile, it's a herbal drink, not black jelly, black jelly bean. It's just like herbs. So it's funny. You said the Jagermeister thing because, and I'm not proud of this, but I will tell it because it is funny. So when we went into the St. Louis marketplace, when we first got into Missouri with distribution, um, I got.
01:32:55
Speaker
Kind of the college side of town that i had to go to all my sales guy went to more of the ritzy places and i was actually one of the ways that i sold our absence into the accounts was by literally saying like it's like jagermeister but it's for pros.
01:33:21
Speaker
It's like Jagermeister, but for the pros instead of it's that stuff that tastes like black jelly bean. A hundred percent, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can get amongst that. It's not sweet and sickly, but it's a similar flavor profile. Yeah. One of the other things that popped up a bunch from that last video I put out was
Myths and Modern Regulations on Wormwood
01:33:45
Speaker
Wormwood is banned in America. So all of the absence that you see in America is not really absent. And then so on and so forth, all of the things that come from there. I'm sure you've heard someone say this before, right? Yes, all the time. Absolutely. And it couldn't be farther from the truth. So we are restricted on the amount of Alpha Dojo that can be in the finished product.
01:34:08
Speaker
And they used to be very picky about that. I don't think there's picky is what they used to be. And I can't remember the exact, uh, I think it was, we were supposed to be like 10 under 10 parts per million or something like that. Um, whereas in Europe, they had, they could be up to 30 parts per million. But when you go back and you look at like the work that Ted bro, what Jade liqueurs did, when he kind of brought absent back to the mainstream and made it legal in the U S again. And you look at the gas chromatography and all the chemistry that he worked even on those vintage absence.
01:34:35
Speaker
they were never anywhere for the most part, anywhere near 30 parts per million or whatever that arbitrary rate is that it's based on in France to begin with. So that was never the case. And the way that they actually outlawed Absinthe originally was by outlawing the Alpha Thujone is what they did, which meant that everybody thought that because of wormwood,
01:35:01
Speaker
You had that off to join content and so therefore you can't use warm wood but turns out that there was never enough alpha through join in the first place as we discussed. Which means that it never should be legal in the first place and technically really i guess if you look at it based on alpha through john it was never really legal just nobody could prove otherwise. Right you couldn't you couldn't prove that there wasn't that amount in there so.
01:35:27
Speaker
So I completely understand that you are not a walking, talking GC, but what, what would you guess? Would you guess this is under 10 parts per million alpha through join? The one that I made it easily. Well, okay. So you can make a pretty, you can make it like, not like I know absence, but this is not a sweet, pretty drink. It has some, uh,
01:35:51
Speaker
underlying body to it to balance everything else on it. So you can make a pretty real absence even within that limit of 10 parts per million. Interesting. Even if you were over 10 parts per million on what you made, because we did do a lot of wormwood on that, it varies so much depending on where that wormwood has grown, how old the wormwood is, et cetera. I mean, it's literally all over the map. And so to knock on wood, and don't get me wrong, I hope it doesn't happen.
01:36:20
Speaker
They haven't asked for a test on absinthe from us in several years now as far as the wormwood account goes. They got much more interested in that black liquor, or the licorice root component in particular, because it's vascular restrictive. And my understanding is somebody came up with some kind of hangover cure that relied on one of the compounds from licorice roots, and there were some cardiovascular concerns. And so then they went from a wormwood's a problem to now licorice roots a problem.
01:36:47
Speaker
But yes, we do use Grand Wormwood 100%. We import ours from France, as a matter of fact. Awesome. What else is there? I can even pull that video up and have a little think, see if there's anything else that I find interesting. So for me,
01:37:06
Speaker
production myths are really, here's an issue. Two things that are not, I guess they're not really so much myths as they are sort of misunderstandings. One is that there, you know, there is a movement to make absinthe come back, especially in the United States amongst craft distillers, but there seems to be
01:37:27
Speaker
a real reluctance to do anything non-traditional to Absinthe. In other words, everyone who's in the Absinthe game is trying to stay within that bell epoch thing and trying to stay within those realms of what that is. And they don't look at it like we do American gin, right? And I see no reason why you can't make a modern style Absinthe, right? There's no 11th commandment that says thou shalt not.
01:37:54
Speaker
you know, make a modern absinthe. Yeah. Um, yeah. But then to say, maybe you shouldn't call it absent, like going back to the regionalization of the drink. I can kind of understand that, right? Like these people that want a traditional drink. If we had absinthe on it, we have a general idea of what we're getting. I can
01:38:17
Speaker
I sit on the fence with that argument a lot of the time, but yeah. Oh, and we should say too, that the plan is for us to use these two podcasts as a springboard to come back again and then talk about what a modern absence can be and perhaps what you think it should be and good examples and all that sort of stuff as well. So we'll be back again.
01:38:37
Speaker
And to some extent, we do have a little bit of a roundabout with that, though, too, because we had that Indiana absent tradition from 1830, which is sort of parallel to absent developing in Europe at the same time. So that's kind of interesting. But also, we don't have a recognized, in the United States, we don't have a recognized absent category. It all falls under distilled spirit specialties when it falls under. Right, right.
01:39:02
Speaker
When you see absent on the bottle it's a fanciful name is what it is in the same in the same sort of vein the other thing that annoys me.
01:39:14
Speaker
I'm always glad to see Absinthe get attention in particular. Um, and of course we have, you know, the show moonshiners and they did master distiller and all that stuff. They've shown a few people on there making quote unquote absent, but, and I'm all for Americanizing Absinthe, but when you're approaching Absinthe from the, I'm going to put, you know, 60 grams per gallon of wormwood and I'm going to put 20 grams per gallon of a niece and 20 grams per gallon of fennel.
01:39:44
Speaker
That's not absent, right? That there would be no argument to me whatsoever that you could call anything like that absent, right? There should be at least, um, and that's maybe why we need a category in particular is, is so that there's at least a baseline that you can work off of. So, I mean, there's a similar thing happening with gin, right? You know, we put 12 grams of juniper in, in four kilos of strawberries and we're calling it gin was like, well,
01:40:13
Speaker
There's nothing really stopping you doing that. There's kind of an argument to be made that that's a strawberry liqueur with a little juniper in it. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And, and it's, it's tricky, right? Cause one of the last gins I made has a buttload of cucumber in it. And I call it gin for the YouTubes.
01:40:36
Speaker
But really, there's a big part of me that's like, well, this isn't really gym. It's just yum. You know, like what other label, what label do I stick on it? If not gin, you know, if I was going to make a commercial version of it, I'd probably have somewhere on the bottle. You can barely call this gin, but it's damn tasty. You know, something like that. Yeah. Mine, my, my, my excuse would be a bunch of a bunch of botanical spirits, but it would be a super generic. It'd be like Aqua Vitae one.
01:41:06
Speaker
and put it in distilled special distilled spirit specialty. Yeah. I love that category. Anything goes the catch all. Yeah. I'm looking through these comments that I'm not really seeing anything specific that I think we need to address, but there's a couple of things that catch my eye. One did the go. I always thought through Joan and absent would instantly turn me into an avant-garde artist and allow me to hang with the bohemians.
01:41:32
Speaker
All I got was bogans. Is this a thing for you in America? Cause I've totally noticed that here in Australia or New Zealand.
Absinthe in Subcultures and Health Discussions
01:41:40
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Where did that come from?
01:41:46
Speaker
That's a very good question. I don't know. I always, it's always make the joke. Um, cause I have a few, there's been a few people come through on tours that, you know, they jump into the bohemian thing and all that sort of stuff. And, uh, I always make the joke when I start that conversation with them, like, are you an artist? And then I'll be like, yeah, I do a little painting. I'll be like, if you cut your ear off yet and tried that. Right. Are you going to, if you're going to commit to the idea, you got to commit to the idea. You can't just go halfway. Oh, Oh, I mean the Bogan thing. Oh, what?
01:42:15
Speaker
Oh, okay. Right. Right. So this is New Zealand slang as well. Um, how do I say this? Um, like low round metal head, I guess would be the best way to put it. Okay. Yeah. No, no, no, I know exactly. Like grungy metal head. That's that's, uh, driving a beat up V8 Holden.
01:42:42
Speaker
And we as combat boots to work and so on and so forth. Yeah, we have that kind of people absent in America because it is here. There is, I think to some degree, uh, I would, I would, I guess instead of that, it would be almost more of like, uh, over here would be more of like the goth culture, right? The goth culture was very much
01:43:09
Speaker
Yeah. Very similar. Except it can't be like the, the, the, the, uh, emo rich kid golf. It has to be white trash golf. Right. Right. It's very much, um, very much. Have you, uh, canceled that? Well, I am. Did you, did you go see bahas on tour sort of thing? Right. Or, um, yeah.
01:43:37
Speaker
Or, uh, you know, you've not lived life until you've drank a fifth of absinthe while listening to, uh, the cures disintegration. I don't know. Yeah. You can't be, you can't be goth and like Metallica as hard as you get kind of thing. Right. Right. I got you. I'll follow now. Okay. I've learned a new word. Nice. Nice. Yeah. It's like white trash metalhead.
01:44:10
Speaker
you ever roll out with legal absence, you know what you're calling it now. Oh dear. Uh, I'm just having a look through here. I don't really see anything else. Um, I guess honestly, it's probably now that I think about it, all of the stuff that I've heard is some mix or
01:44:32
Speaker
twist on it's illegal. It's going to kill you. It's going to make you jump balls. Actually, well, we haven't talked about that a whole lot. Like the whole, um, when would it's going to kill you side of things, which is very similar to the, even the mouse, but, but what are your thoughts on that dude?
01:44:48
Speaker
So, alpha-thujone again is a toxin, and like I said, it can cause, in really high doses, it can cause seizures. Now, there is some evidence that in really high doses, it causes liver damage as well, but the alcohol is also causing liver damage. Interestingly enough, and kind of stepping outside of the spirits of French lick thing again here, because I'm not allowed to do this from their perspective,
01:45:16
Speaker
There's been a ton of study in France, especially with the past couple years that we've been through, with wormwood as an antimicrobial and an antiviral. Interesting. And it is apparently still effective even after it's distilled. So again, that goes back to this idea we talked about in the first episode. It goes back to this idea we talked about in the first episode that this started off as a medicine.
01:45:40
Speaker
I don't know if I told you then or not, Jesse, but I have this, if I had it my way and like the TTV was going to implement like anyone, like they came to me and they said, Alan, what would you do to change anything? I would say it would be nice to see a category that would have to be scientifically backed, right? Which is never going to happen, but in the happy world, it happens, uh, where you would have a category of alcohols and certain gens would fall into this. Certain Aquavits would fall into it and absent, real absence certainly would.
01:46:09
Speaker
that you could almost, and this is not a great word for it, but it's the best descriptor I have, you would almost have a category of alcohols that you would call functional alcohols, right? And that they have some potential health benefits out. They have some potential health benefits, end of story, right? So as long as you use them moderately. But unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever get there. And that's unfortunate because I do think that Absinthe has some
01:46:36
Speaker
It has some legitimate medicinal effects that I've noticed either firsthand or secondhand. And I'll give you just a little piece of ancillary evidence. When I was drinking a lot of Absinthe and two of my other very good friends were drinking a lot of Absinthe during the industry as well.
01:46:54
Speaker
We went for a number of months without anyone being sick from anything. And the minute that I ran out of that absent, we all got sick at the same time within a two week timeframe. So that was, that was kind of all the evidence that I needed that there was something there. So. Yeah, totally. It's, it's funny how that stuff shakes out, isn't it? Right? Cause you're right. You couldn't do it. Cause there'd be like, well, dude, it's alcohol. We can't say that drinking alcohol.
01:47:24
Speaker
good for you. But you could say, Hey, look, if you're going to be smashing whiskey or smashing
01:47:31
Speaker
vodka instead of drinking that drink this and at least you're getting exactly the same harmful effects but there's potentially some positive effects like you could say that but that's a statement I'm happy you know and I tend to hedge very hard on the side of making hard and fast claims that you can't prove scientifically like absolutely it's fine to believe that for yourself and act like that's a good thing for you it's a very hard thing for then someone to recommend it to someone else or have it government
01:48:00
Speaker
One hundred percent recommended by the government and so on and so forth without really rigorous science backing it up And so yeah, it's it's tricky. Um, what might even be ideal? Oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, not carry on Yeah, um, so like with the the idea of like the functional alcohol thing like if you if they actually if you had government research behind it like you you might even
01:48:25
Speaker
And who knows, but you might even see the day where, you know, none of us want prohibition. So we're, we're leaving that off the table, obviously, but you might even see the day where there might be, there might be certain conditions where a doctor says, just like they did in the old days, you know, you all, you need to get a glass of whiskey or whatever, but it might be, you know, have a glass of absent once a week and it, you know.
01:48:44
Speaker
help, whatever it helps do. There might be an argument to be made if they were to do the studies and see the functionality of the herbal medicines there and the alchemy that goes into Absinthe that there may be uses for it in that way in a medical setting, so to speak.
01:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, totally, man. Um, I, uh, last, well yesterday slash last night, uh, for the quote unquote meme spirits series on YouTube, I distilled Listerie
Safety and Future of Absinthe Production
01:49:14
Speaker
mouthwash. Oh, wow. Uh, don't do it bro. It tastes like asked like, do you have a VIX vapor rub in America? Oh yeah. You know what I mean?
01:49:29
Speaker
I imagine just eating a jar of Vicks. That's about what it tasted like. It was bad. But it got me thinking, I was a bit concerned with the whole idea of this could come off in a way that I don't want to portray the whole, you don't want to portray it as
01:49:50
Speaker
getting drunk for cheap from with stuff that you can buy at the supermarket without paying lick attack, any of that sort of stuff. Um, so I looked into a little bit and on one side it was, um, do not drink mouthwash because most of the time it's denatured so they don't have to pay alcohol tax on it. I was like, well, that kind of makes sense, but also it's a product that's literally made to go in your mouth.
01:50:15
Speaker
Like, so how bad are they actually denaturing this stuff? Um, so for, for the sake of safety, we didn't really drink it. We just kind of taste it. And that was about it. But yeah, I looked at a couple of studies and I didn't dig into the how vile were these studies where I just had a quick look and it was basically, yeah, there's some nasty shit in mouthwash. Uh, but it turns out that if you drink a upload of it regularly, the worst thing in it is the ethanol.
01:50:44
Speaker
That makes sense. This idea just comes back over and over and over again. Like don't get copper sulfate and color your alcohol with it. Yes, you're asking for it. Absolutely. Yeah. Don't use an old radiator out of a 40 year old car as your reflux condenser or your product condenser. You're going to kill yourself.
01:51:06
Speaker
But just don't be an idiot and really like it's alcohol. We, it's a poison. We know that. Yeah, absolutely. Anything, anything in the wrong, in the wrong dose is a poison.
01:51:18
Speaker
And anything in a small enough dose is completely fine. Well, you know, you may have to touch on, and I love the meme spirits thing that you do anyways, but you may have to do a meme spirits absinthe with some, might have to just go to that black jelly bean place and see what you can do. That's a good point, actually. That'd be kind of funny. How do I do that as a gotcha? Right, right. That could be fun.
01:51:48
Speaker
You have to kind of like drop that. What you do is you drop it as like a hidden bonus episode in the middle of a full episode somewhere, right? Like you just immediately cut over to. Yeah. I mean, just straight up black jelly beans. That has to be, I mean, I have to, I feel like I know exactly what that tastes like. It tastes like really bad Sam Booker.
01:52:18
Speaker
Yes. Right. All right, man. This has been absolutely awesome, dude. I am a hundred percent going to go and try and make another absence in this style. Awesome. Swiss Blanche style. I'm hooked on it. I think it's delicious. Dude, man, it's expensive to buy botanicals though. It's not cheap to make.
01:52:46
Speaker
And especially just, you know, and I know you have an even harder time where you're at finding them, but even just finding good quality botanicals in general is, it's a pain. It's a pain to find them. So. Yeah. I mean, I didn't really have options. It was basically, I could buy it from different places, but almost all of those places were calling it from the same distributor. Um, you know, there wasn't options in terms of getting different stuff. So I just got it and that was okay.
01:53:14
Speaker
Well, and when you go back and you look at those recipes I gave you, if there's anything you have questions on or anything of that nature, just reach out to me. I'll be glad to help you. Um, the other thing I want to throw in here too. Uh, cause I think it just came out. Uh, we, I just finished the second little book cause I'm doing these, this little book series every once in a while that we sell through our website, the alchemist cabinet. Um, so the alchemist cabinet volume two, I can't remember, I think we call it the black forest method, but there are a,
01:53:41
Speaker
Ton of botanical recipes in there, including I think three or four absent recipes and some gin recipes and stuff for people who want to do further research on that sort of thing and want to get really weird. I think there's a, there's a number of orange juice based botanical spirits in there because for some reason I got obsessed with that for about a six month period. So.
01:54:05
Speaker
Is that orange juice as a sugar source to ferment or orange juice as a flavoring agent in the pot or? Sugar source. Straight up sugar source. Just capitalize it because I think commercial orange juice is like
01:54:22
Speaker
Specific gravity is like 1040 or something like that. So it's fairly low. So I bumped it with, you know, chapter lie sugar. And it actually started because somebody brought me like a box truck full of citrus one time in the middle of the winter time. I don't know where they got it from, but it was like every kind of citrus you can imagine. And so my spare room was full of these boxes of citrus. And I'm like, I don't know what in the hell I'm going to do with all this. So it turned into, well, can you make orange brandy? You can make orange juice brandy. And then, well, then what the hell do you do with it after that?
01:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, I had a friend call me the other day and they're growing tomatoes and she said, I've got, I think it was two or three 20 litre pails of tomatoes sitting here that need to be eaten like in the next week. Like what can I make with it? And my thought was instantly
01:55:12
Speaker
Can I make tomato brandy? Oh, no, no. Sorry. You meant food. Oh, okay. Food, salsa, sundried tomatoes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. I know what you mean. Some of the best stuff comes out of the free stuff.
01:55:29
Speaker
Right. Right. Right. Well, I mean, dude, when you think about it, that's pretty much what any alcohol ever was ever. Right. It's like, what is cheap enough that we can feed it to the animals? We'll make booze out of it. Right. Like anywhere in the world. That's what it is. Yep. So when do people get the book to plug the book, plug it hard.
01:55:48
Speaker
Uh, so for the, I know for us orders right now and probably, and I think international, uh, although if you're ordering international, make sure you reach out to us first so we can make sure shipping is good to go. But it's the alchemist cabinet.com, uh, the warehouse, which is on the alchemist cabinet. And then there is a.
01:56:05
Speaker
And I do not have it memorized as one of the long links, but if you, if you look at my Facebook or Instagram, you will see there's an Amazon link for the U S and I know there's one for Canada. If you order through our store, it takes us a couple of weeks to get them. And we can for sure find a way to get them to you internationally. And if they come through the store, I also signed them. So that's probably the better deal overall. Oh, nice.
01:56:26
Speaker
Nice. All right. Awesome, man. Well, this has been an absolute blast, dude. I will definitely be in touch with you to ask your questions when I get ready to make this stuff. But for those of you listening, if you have specific questions, you can attempt to get hold of me. I'm always a little loathe to say this because then
01:56:45
Speaker
too many people try it and we can't respond to them all. But we are going to do another podcast. So I'll try and gather up a few questions that you guys have to sort of sum this whole absinthe thing up together. And we can roll a little of that into it as well as talking about making a modern absinthe.
01:57:05
Speaker
I did want to take a minute to and tell you, thanks for, uh, for bumping the one piece of the time channel, uh, because that helped me out tremendously. Um, yeah, it, it, uh, you know, we still, we don't have a ton of viewers, but the viewers we have are the people that are into the advanced stuff. And that's what I was hoping for is that I would get those people. Um, and we certainly got them and they came in droves from, from watching your stuff for sure. So I greatly appreciate that dude.
01:57:33
Speaker
Absolutely pleasure, man. And I'll shout all your stuff out in the intro that I'll record later to go at the beginning of this when it finally goes live. Time must get jumbled. But if anyone's listening this long, you've obviously enjoyed listening to us talk. We're like two hours in now. So if you've enjoyed this conversation this much,
01:57:57
Speaker
Make sure you go and check out Alan's podcast and YouTube channel. The YouTube channel's the one piece at a time distilling. And don't let the... How do you put it? Alan wasn't joking entirely about his heritage here. Don't let that fool you, man, because there's a perception against that in different parts of the world.
01:58:20
Speaker
Right Alan has an insanely good information to bring to the table from a historical point of view from a Home distilling point of view and then mixing it all in with his experience as a legit Professional distiller as well. So yeah get on board with that guys So thanks Alan. This has been a blast man. I don't go in here I want to talk to you after we stop recording, but thank you so much man. I appreciate it. Yeah
01:58:45
Speaker
Glad to be here. Thanks. So a huge, huge thank you to Alan for doing this. I thoroughly appreciate your input, dude. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this video out. That's my bad. But if you've watched this far through, I'm sure you understand why it is worth going and checking out all of the things that Alan is doing. Once again, a reminder, the links are down in the description. Go check him out. Tell him he's awesome. It's worth it for you. Trust me. All right, team. I'll catch you later. See you next time.