Saturday, October 6, 2012
Home Made Absinthe
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About Me
- Ken Albala
- Food Historian at the University of the Pacific. Author of Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, The Banquet, Beans (2008 IACP Jane Grigson Award) and Pancake.THE LOST ART OF REAL COOKING with Rosanna Nafziger. Coeditor of Food and Faith; Editor of A Cultural History of Food: The Renaissance. Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia (4 vols.) Three World Cuisines: Italian, Mexican and Chinese won the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Best Foreign Cuisine book in the World. The Routledge International Handbook to Food Studies. THE LOST ARTS OF HEARTH AND HOME with Rosanna Nafziger. Grow Food, Cook Food, Share Food, a little book on Nuts and The Food History Reader. The Most Excellent Book of Cookery (translation of a 16th c. French Cookbook with Tim Tomasik). The Sage Encyclopedia of Food Issues Encyclopedia. At the Table. Noodle Soup, The Great Gelatin Revival, Opulent Nosh. Forthcoming: Atlas of Fermentation
Noodle Soup: Recipes, Techniques, Obsession
This is me. GO COOK.
8 comments:
I do love absinthe... especially the terribly herby variety. I used to have a giant bush of the wooly green stuff and a prop took a bundle and made some from scratch... I could understand why people went blind with the high alcohol content. I can't believe you distilled it.... you are a wonder.
What? I can't see the screen. Or anything.
Fantastic!
Do you have a commercial still or do you rig up a homemade one?
Also, why is it not green? I would expect that the herbs would make it so, no?
Do like the green fairy, indeed. . .
Hey Laura, it's a small copper still you can buy on line from Al Ambiq, made in Portugal. All distillates come out perfectly clear. Absinthe usually has herbs added back in after to give it the color.
Rats with unripe grapes...hmmm, sounds like you could come up with a rodentia verjus, or something.
I never made an absinthe, but I did once freeze-distill a batch of mead that came out rather ho-hum. It was pretty tasty after. As to commercial mead distillation, you might find something close to that with Barunjaeger--though whether that is a mead distilled into something delightfully dangerous, or a distillate with honey added, I couldn't tell you after all this time.
Glenn, Someone asked me the same question on facebook about Barenjaeger. Apparently it is grain alcohol with "real" honey added. Whoop.
http://combvodka.com/the-spirits/
YES apparently there is a honey based spirit. I LOVE their approach to distilling. Only if you're using crap do you need to distill many times to get rid of the bad flavors. Otherwise once works perfectly.
I tasted home distilled absinthe for the first time a few weeks ago; it was exquisite. So glad to read about it here-- it doesn't sound too difficult at all!
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