Great article. I'd love to try Breux's absinthe. I like herbal liquors. Any one ever try these?

horrible written but informative barely

My friend had a couple bottles from the Czech Republic which claimed to contain wormwood and Thujone. Was pretty good stuff.

Hagbardr

If you are willing to pay a bit more, there are manufacturers who stick close enough to the original processes that they don't need to add artifical coloring. It's generally going to be the best absinthe anyway, since they're not using dyes to cover up a shoddy product.

soupnyc807
Scott (from EuroTrip) brought a bottle back from the Czech Rep.
/tasty
//nobody made out with anyone

peart2112: horrible written but informative barely

you authority about write certainly

Excellent Article, I think the good Mr. Breaux will be seeing a spike in sales soon.

My family got me a bottle of the stuff while touring europe on that Popefest thing the catholics do. I can just tell it's crap though, plastic wrapper and marketed like it's some new energy drink "200 ml THUJONE!!!11!!" Assuming I ever scrounge up $100 for drinking, Nouvelle-Orleans will be the first thing on my list.

The clarity effect is really interesting, I was gaming three sheets to the wind but was still performing just fine. Your coordination suffers a little from the alcohol, but your thinking is crsytal clear.
Have any of you farkers actually had hallucinations from it? I heard that's one of the exaggerations born of infamy, but my brother swears he had them. My brother's the sort of prick who lies like that just to make himself feel cooler, so I still wonder .

This is like cigarettes: The buzz isn't worth the effort.

peart2112: horrible written but informative barely

absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

I once had absinthe in London, but it was the crappy cheap kind so it was like drinking mouth wash.

DuPuma

Hell, you can order absinthe from the internets and have it shipped. A buddy of mine has had more than three bottles FedExed to his door.

So, four?

Hagbardr: a legal substance that should be banned: Yellow #5. That shiat gives me horrible migranes.
 

Amen, brother. The stuff makes me physically ill. Why something so harmful to so many is still allowed to be used given that it's just a food coloring dye is beyond my comprehension.

This douche in the article sounds like the guy that everyone wants to punch. Flaunting his money so he can buy friends. Wears expensive clothes, buys expensive liquor, has too much money to know what to do with it.

Obscure

I have. Tastes kindof like a distilled forest, but in a good way.

erire13: I just brew my own. Its not illegal to do so in the US unless I sell it. Ummy.


I smell BS.

First, absinthe isn't brewed. It's distilled. If you don't know the difference, you're probably not really making it.

Second, while it's legal to make a limited amount of beer and wine in your home, it is in no way legal to distill your own spirits unless you obtain a license to do so.

Of course, there are some folks who "make" absinthe by mashing a few herbs together and steeping it in vodka or pure grain alcohol, but that ain't really absinthe.

peart2112: horrible written but informative barely

zeltar: you authority about write certainly

absinthe nose my out!

Good story.

Would have been nice if the writer had tied up the loose end about his original 1908 copy of Aux Pays d'Absinthe.

Maybe that's in the sequel.

I betcha Dan Brown steals the whole story and after a complete novel still hasn't fleshed out the characters any further.

A friend of mine, who happens to be the bartender at my regular here in Hong Kong, has a particular love for absinthe, and a supplier who's happy to keep him well stocked (with La Fee; not the best, but pretty good). I've been on a fairly steady diet of 2-3 absinthe cocktails (melted sugar cubes + cold water) per night, generally 2-3 nights a week. Even without the coolness that comes with drinking something rare, it's still a really nice drink; smooth, deceptively strong, and with a unique taste and cloudy-green color. It takes a lot for any hallucinations to set in, they're fairly mild in any case, and drinking enough would generally mean being drunk as well and having imbibed quite a lot of decently pricey liquor. Worth trying if you can get your hands on it, and be sure you go through the whole ritual; it makes the drink not only taste better, but feel like more of a special event.

I was of the impression that the Canadian Absynthe was pyar crap, at least the stuff I tried was.

A fried of mine works for a Eurorean cruise line and is always bringing back crazy shiat. One night a bunch of us drank a bottle of the realy stuff and I am now missing about 6 hours of my life. All I know is I woke up on someone's couch thinking I had a broken arm, but it was just pulled muscles.

It's crazy stuff, but I farking hate fennel, so I won't be drinking it again.

"It was like having a pipe but nothing to smoke."

I bet he grows good weed too.

The alcohol overwhelms whatever high you might get.

Yeah, its 140 proof, so it has the tendency to do that.

/also tastes like a sack full of black licorice flavored arseholes

Nicotine is toxic if it's ingested.

Loved the stuff had, but it wasnt the good quality stuff.

Now here's a prime cause for the addition of the "Alton" tag! I suggest we start a petition.

That is the first long article in a while that I enjoyed reading. Good work; that is how things get done. The guy is on to something.

How does one become an "elite fark enforcer"?

erire13
I just brew my own. Its not illegal to do so in the US unless I sell it. Ummy.

I thought that it was legal to brew alcoholic drinks, but not to distill them? Doesn't absinthe require distilling? The article seemed to be saying that was a necessary step in the whole thing.

I ordered a couple of bottles online from a place in Spain, think it was Czech absinthe. I wasn't that crazy about it, really -- I like licorice-flavored stuff too, like Sambuca, but this just had a flavor to it that I couldn't really get past. Tried drinking a fair amount anyway, just to see what the effects were like...felt like any other booze to me.

I gave the second bottle away.

From personal experience, the Spanish stuff seems pretty authentic, given that they never stopped making it. It's a different kind of drunk, much like mescal is a different drunk than tequila, supposedly because of the trace amounts of mescaline.

There's also an Absinthe museum in Auvers-sur-Oise, about an hour north of Paris, run by a woman who literally wrote the book on the subject, Marie-Claude Delahaye. Worth a visit if you're in the area.

For all you n00bs.

Axolotl: It's a different kind of drunk, much like mescal is a different drunk than tequila, supposedly because of the trace amounts of mescaline.

There is no mescaline in mezcal. It is found, however, in peyote.

absinthe tastes pretty horrid (or at least the stuff i had in barcelona did, i have no idea what it "really" was or whatever)

then again, i'm not a fan of liqorice.

i got pretty drunk.

me likey the absinthe...

when in hungary, unicum also teh shiat

yes, you have to distill absinthe. However, a lot of kids just soak the herbs in vodka, but that tastes like rotting ass. I used to do that until i managed to aquire a ghetto rigged still.

once its distilled, and soaked in anise seed and a bit of fresh peppermint, man that is good stuff :)

/going to go drink his newly made bottle now

I want some quality absinthe.. Sounds great.

I had a friend who sampled some in Spain. She's quiet and level-headed, and said the drink was "interesting".

Regardless, great article. Peart2112 is an idiot.

We picked up a couple bottles in Dubrovnik. It's good stuff and gives you a seriously warm and relaxed feeling. It's like being smacked with a velvet glove wrapped around a brick.

mix it up some

tequila, absinthe and a woman you'll never see again!



With such a high alcohol content it's capable of causing dimentia through dehydration LONG before the wackywood does you in.

Furthermore there's methanol in it as well.

It's not hard to make, given a little patience. And not to discuss details of a possibly criminal act, but one can distil anything (such as *ahem* water) fairly well on the stove-top using a pressure cooker hooked up to some copper pipe. Plenty of ice to cool the pipe and you're set.

The first few batches may taste like ass until you get the feel for the mix. And use store-bought *ahem* water instead of from scratch, and you're less likely to go blind or have ass-taste. And still throw out the first bit of it, just to be safe.

Anyone who wants to experience the effects of thujone without ordering pricey absinthe only needs to buy a small bottle of sage essential oil at a place that deals in aromatherapy. Place about 10 drops on a ball of cotton and breath that through your nose for a few minutes. The smell is totally overwhelming and kind sort of putting off (more pleasant when diluted) but you will definitely begin to enter the psychedelic realm without having to worry about Kunta Kinte Sr. refusing to leave your fridge.

/Absinthe is for artists, Sage is for prophets

"I put in a little absinth. It killed them unfortunately, but it kept the blood warm."

"You let me drink DEAD BLOOD???"

-got nuthin

Does this stuff taste anything like Ouzo? Still got a small bottle of it in the back of my fridge somewhere.

I purchased a few bottles from a German vendor. The first shipment was confiscated by US Customs. They proceeded to ship me the empty box. They mock me. The vendor happily shipped a replacement, via private courier, which made it to me fine.

Mad Mark
Very much like Ouzo. If you can stomach that stuff, you can handle the standard absinthe, which is loaded with anise, the same thing that flavors Ouzo.

This stuff isn't for casual drinkers. Its harsh to drink, even when mixed. There are makes of the green stuff that doesn't have absinthe, but will still give you a whopper of a hangover the next day.

/never had the guts, nor the stomach, to drink enough to really have any effect. But the hangover was very much present.

Hehe, funny. This stuff took my ass out Thurs night. I'll give a quick play by play.

1st drink. The "speedball" effect. Everything got warm and fuzzy. The music sounded better, the room has a "glow" to it, mind felt energized yet relaxed.

2nd drink. I actually had a discussion with my friend that no one actually knows how long a human lives because we measure in Earth years and if we lived on Mars the length would be different. I had absolutely no idea why my non drinking friend was in hysterics.

3nd drink. Don't really remember much. Woke up at 7 AM with all my clothes on and lights on. Wrote "at this point nothing farking matters" before I passed out.

Zasko - No images from "The Perfect Drug" video yet?

Just for you:



I'd love to try some good absinthe, I like ouzo so I'm not worried about the flavor. A friend of mine made some, but I don't know what was really in it. Maybe someday good stuff will be made legal in the US.

/no reason not too as this article shows, but it still probably won't happen

If you want to obtain absinthe, I can recommend this place--

http://www.spiritscorner.com/

They're in Spain but will ship to the US. Beware that it was 37 Euros for the absinthe and 46 Euros for shipping, but it was here in two days.

"Americans drink to get drunk". Ah yes, tell that to an ex of mine. I was never really able to make him understand that some people (including myself) drink because they enjoy what they're drinking; as opposed to drinking for the unpleasant side effects that go along with overdoing it. Then again, this was someone that also ate until he could no longer function until after taking a nap. Hm, he was also in a fraternity. That alone should have been a clue ...