Hey people,

Since I like working with herbs I though it would be a good time to try to make some home made absinthe myself.


I looked at many recipes and like always, I distilled my own recipe out of it with some special notes:

WARNING

I did not yet test this recipe! The result can be a HORRIBLE TASTING liquid.

INGREDIENTS

1L 96% Alcohol
40g Wormwood leaves + stems of leaves (directly picked from the garden, in the evening)
10g Fennel Seed
10g Calamus Root
1g Mint
1g yarrow flowers
1g Cardamon
1g Nutmeg
4 Sacred Lotus seeds
2 Star Anise fruits
Little snuff of cinnamon

PREPARATION

1) Take one bottle of alcohol, pour half of the alcohol in another container. We will add it back later but for now we need room in the bottle.
2) Put the freshly picked wormwood in the alcohol bottle
3) Grind all the herbs in a mortar + pestle. The Sacred Lotus seeds I crush and remove the crust, I don't want the crust in the absinthe.
4) Add the grinded herbs to the alcohol bottle
5) Fill up the alcohol bottle with the alcohol you poured into another container


Bottle after adding all the herbs and shaking it a bit around

NEXT STEP

Let the bottle sit for a few weeks (2 to 3 weeks) in a dark place. This to let the alcohol get all the goodies out of the herbs.

LAST STEP

I will do this in a few weeks from now. I'm thinking about adding a mix of anise syrup and water until the alcohol percentage is about 35%. I still have to work out what I think is best but I will keep you all updated.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Oh, don't worry. It WILL taste horrible.

What are the effects of absinthe? I always thought this stuff is more like a romantic myth...if the stuff has 40% alcohol you will just get realy drunk. Even if the herbs have an effect the alcohol will dominate. Or am i very wrong here?

They state you have to drink fast, let the herbs kick in before the alcohol does.


And yes, I'm pretty sure it will taste horrible. Though maybe for one sec this recipe can help me think it will taste ok.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

It looks nice in the bottle

It seems that besides ethanol, the main active ingredient in most authentic Absinthe is Thujone. White sage is supposedly high in Thujone. has anyone tried making or spiking Absinthe with White Sage extract? It could be possible to greatly increase the Thujone level in store bought Absinthe by extracting from White sage via pure ethanol, reducing and adding the reduced liquid to the Absinthe. Anyone have any direct experience with this?

Well, I got to hand it to you Trav, you certainly are adventurous! That stuff's probably going to taste craaaaazy (but mostly bitter) and have a helluva kick. I did some work developing absinthe recipes for an artisan distillery once, and here's my low-down:

You should build a small still! What you're doing now is probably going to be EFFECTIVE, but IMO absinthe ain't all about effect. The difference between what you're making and a drinkable absinthe is the difference between a really insane mimosa resin and fluffy white DMT. The resin won't be fun to smoke, might have some unexpected side-effects, and wouldn't be THAT much harder to turn into something pleasurable. Assuming you're willing to build/buy a small pot still... which isn't all that bad!

First, on small pot stills. I built my first pot still with $20, an afternoon and a small cooking pot I already had (about 2L or so). I drilled a hole in the top of the pot, bolted a stainless steel flange with a female screw head to it, screwed in a copper pipe with a T-joint and cap on the end, then attached a condenser to the T-joint (made from more copper piping, could be as simple as a giant copper coil or a copper pipe with water running over it to cool it). Brown-black bitter wormwood booze goes in the pot, add a little heat, and out come sweet, clear absinthe blanc! Add a couple herbs for coloration, and you're done. I used little clips to keep the lid of the pot in place. With absinthe, there's no pressure generated by the distillation, so you don't have to mess up a pressure cooker or anything, and all it took was a little soldering no more complicated than when you do household plumbing.

Second, my recipe! It took quite a bit of work to come up with this, and I don't think I'd share it anywhere but the Nexus...

The ingredients are listed per 1.5L bottle of approx. 60-70% alcohol. Use pure spirits. All herb weights are based on DRIED herbs unless otherwise noted.

Add:
5g wormwood foliage
6g anise seeds
5g fennel seeds
8g star anise
2g hyssop
4g fresh mint
2g angelica
1g calamus root
.25g coriander (could be upped a notch)

Let sit for 3-5 days and then distill.
Take clear distillate and add:
4g fresh hyssop
4g fresh lemon balm
4g fresh mint

Let sit for 2-3 days, remove herbs and bottle. Let sit for at least 1 week before consuming, best results after 1 month, etc.

To be honest, I never really tried many non-conventional absinthe ingredients. So nutmeg, cardamom, yarrow, cinnamon and sacred lotus might be great additions to this recipe, I just haven't tested them out! But know that since nutmeg, cardamom and cinnamon are such strong flavors that you should probably test them out in .25g increments just to be safe.

Good luck!

To go with Mitakuye's post, (kind of off topic) I red somewhere that a guy made thujone brownies. Same concept as making canna-brownies, only cook the wormwood into the oil to remove the thujone and make brownies with it. He said he felt pretty stoned.

So yeah... maybe thujone has more to offer than people think. I can't say for sure since I've never tried it myself though.

just harvested it today! i'll make some stuff in near future with it

exciting thread! I love working with herbs. have long been interested in absinthe and space paste, ect. recipes. And have wanted to make modified/enhanced versions. Strongest effects I ever got from absinthe were about 1.5 hrs of closed eyed visual patterning after drinking 2 straight shots of an expensive, albeit american, absinthe. Called St. George.

that's weird..do u think it could have been placebo effect enanced from alchool suggestionability? afaik absinth is not psychoactive at all,at least in the concentrations that tujone is usually present..there's some texts around the matter. i've also chatted with a famous ethnobotanist some time ago, that said to me that absinth is not a psychoactive plant of interest and that there's not documentations of its use in the past...it kinda appeared only in the 1800.

In my humble opinion, as a long time brewer and distiller:

The so-called "holy trininty" of absinthe is (a) wormwood, (b) fennel, and (c) anise. Wormwood is a neurotoxin, and has been showed to increase absorption of other compounds in the body. But most likely, it's the fennel and anise that are actually supplying the compounds necessary for the effects of absinthe. In general, absinthe is one of the least understood alcoholic drinks around. Many people think that if you drink absinthe, you'll fly off to fairy land; I have never experienced that and I know no one that has. The common effects of absinthe is a simultaneous feeling of complete lucidity and peace, and at the same time being drunk. It's a very strange experience. Additionally, absinthe was traditionally made very strong, at around 60-70% alcohol by volume (ABV), but it wasn't drunk that way. It was mixed with water, producing the so called ouzu effect where the absinth turns a green and white color. That color is produced by the precipitation of estragole in the liquid; fennel and anise are high in estragole. [EDIT: the green color is from the wormwood and fennel, that wasn't clear from the initial post]

There have been theories (Shulgin states this in his treatise of the "essential amphetamines" ) that estragole has some level of bioactivity. Based on my own trials, particularly with Space Paste (many of the parts of space paste are chuck full of estragole), that this is correct. The nutmeg portion of space paste doesn't start of about 5 hours, but the estragole portion starts in about 30 minutes! It's a much simpler compound than say safrole or myristicin or elemicin (the proposed actives in nutmeg, at least following Shulgin's logic) and can be "transformed" faster and more reliably. I find that if I eat a lot of basil, I feel more clear headed; this is exactly the effect I get from absinthe and also the effect that was reported from famous figures in absinthe history like Van Gogh. Thus, it was dubbed "the green fairy" because those that drank it felt that it was a muse that helped them with their art and expression.

With good absinthe, I haven't found the need to drink fast - it lasts a long long time. With nutmeg in the recipe, it's going to last about 10 hours! I would also recommend trying to add cinnamon, allspice, and whole black pepper corns to the soak; they all help with "essential amphetamine" activation, if you follow Shulgin's logic.

Recently I rediscovered that I still had this bottle!

The pictures are of the state I found it in.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

My take on Absinthe is that Thujone in Wormwood, because it blocks out GABA-A and Serotonin 3, it allows for more Alcohol to be consumed, which not only provides a bit of a clearer effect/headspace, but also allows for Alcohol's NMDA antagonistic effects to become more noticeable, potentially causing some dissociative effects. Though some other chemical constituents in Wormwood or other herbs may synergize with the Alcohol causing some altered or enhanced Alcohol experience. Similar to how Aya is, you can add admixture plants to the Harmalas and DMT to get different kinds of effects and experiences out of it, and with other compounds having some active properties contributing to the overall "intoxication".

I would say, don't get me started again - but then again, I accidentally absorbed some absinthe analogue through my fingers yesterday so it's happened already. The material in question was a distilled nutmeg/sweet cicely/lemon balm tincture which was finished with a long soak over lots of Indian dill seed (sowa) and lemon peel. Nowadays I mostly use it as a fly spray but I spilled some on my fingers while refilling the sprayer. That stuff is definitely active transdermally.

Be careful with the thujone, I know at least one person (not me!) who was hospitalised with convulsions after drinking too much absinthe (in Czechia). This is from thujone's GABAergic effects. As far as synergies with other ingredients go, the fennel and anise provide important phenylpropenes which, if we may extend the latest research about nutmeg (myristicin/elemicin) to anethole and estragole, would appear to have some kind of effect on the cannabinoid system - possibly by inhibiting FAAH and/or MAGL. More research is most definitely needed.


Footnote: If it ain't distilled, it ain't really absinthe!

Interesting!

I will def be careful with exploring this long term extraction.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

I would like to make absinthe simply for the taste of it. There are a handful of cocktails that call for absinthe or something similar (I guess a more broad catergory called "herbsaints" or something similar has been made based on the absinthe recipe). I would probably just use alcohol I already have, either grain, vodka or whiskey, and soak herbs to extract the taste. I didn't realize it was possible to make a still for so cheap though.. I will definitely have to look into that at some point.

The handful of times I took nutmeg, back when I was 14-16, it indeed took a long time to kick in, and when it did, it was a very intense , stoning, multiple day long effect. Of course I was used to dxm at the time so this wasn't too far fetched for me (dxm lasts for days for me also). It did share some effects with cannabis and I generally looked stoned ( I even remember going to court one day when I was maybe 14 and my lawyer and DSS worker saying are you sure you can go in front of the judge right now? And I'm thinking hmmm, I can definitely still think straight; why are they asking me this? Then I looked at a mirror.. ). Back then I don't remember being able to find very much information on nutmeg; I would not be surprised if it acted on the cannabinoid system to some extent.

I've never had absinthe. Regarding botanically infused liquors, the one I've always wanted to try is Chartreuse. Like absinthe, it has quite a history. Spendy though, for a bottle.

Anymore if I'm going to drink liquor I get Jose Cuervo Gold. With lime chunks and salt. Super fun memories. Tastes like misbehavior.

Wormwood is being looked at for COVID-19. I'd be up for shot of absinthe now a days 🙂

Except the artemisia being looked at is mugwort not the absynthium. In fact mugwort is used with success to treat paludism but is being made illegal for that too and it seems things ( drugs or herbs) working against paludism works for this coronavirus too. So yeh Artemisia annuum is the one for corona / paludism, and absynth is artemisia absynthium. not sure the value of absynth but mugwort has more and grows around nearly everywhere I go.