StillSmart

has anyone done absinthe in an airstill ? or point me in the right direction please

ginger

Still spirits and prestige do a Absinth essence if that helps
Cheers

A decent Absinth has an ABV of 60% so you are going to have to make several runs to get the cut high enough.

If you follow the instructions on this site, the centre hearts cut will be above 70%.

Absinth has an ABV of 60% so you are going to have to make several runs to get the cut high enough.


Eh ??

I've done a few absinthes in the airstill. It's pretty straightforward. Getting good quality ingredients is possibly the toughest part of the process.

mashy wrote:
Absinth has an ABV of 60% so you are going to have to make several runs to get the cut high enough.

Eh ??

Eh ?? explained.
An Airstill is only a pot still so you will not get a constant high ABV like a reflux and as it's only 4L a go it will take several runs taking the 60% cut from the rest to get a decent amount.

I misunderstood sorry.
Volume-wise I agree. It is a small unit. So sure large volumes take time to accumulate.

I read your post as meaning an air still couldn't achieve more than 60%

I misunderstood that as well.

Well unless my eyesight is worse than I thought (on my second prescription of readers......), by doing a double distill in my airstill (first run as a strip, making sure about the second run is below 40% ABV with RO water, then doing a carefully monitored run and only taking 800 mls for letting down, again with RO water, then carbon filtering), I manage to get between 80 and 85% ABV from it.

Then it can be filtered at that strength to try and keep it as original/traditional as possible.

Gert Strand (Prestige/Ambrosia brands) does indeed, produce a good (IMO anyway) tasting Absinthe flavouring that contains 55mg of Thujone (the active ingredient part of the Wormwood).

Then you can do all the nonsense bit i.e. watering it down with the sugar lump/cube in a fancy slotted spoon etc.........

This is one for the sputnik!

As wormwood stated,finding decent Wormwood may be the hinderance here.
The man chose his name well.

Robert.

Found this..

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.vi ... 26&alt=web

Your favorite store
.... and there is also something I read recently that had similarities to it. I will check my notes.

Buying wormwood is easy. Getting hold of good quality wormwood is not so easy. Absinthe requires dried flowering tops of grand wormwood. If the picture of the eBay stuff is what they are selling, I see a lot of chopped up stems in the mix and no flowers. Making absinthe from this would be like making whiskey from a grain bill that has a load of chopped up cornstalks in it. Then you need Roman wormwood for the finishing step and that's considerably harder to find.

The good news is that these plants are quite easy to grow and even if you have just a tiny garden, it can provide enough herbs for the heaviest of absinthe habits.

Sorry to sound so picky, but I take my wormwood very seriously.

That said...

If the goal of the exercise is simply too see how well the sputnik makes absinthe, then I don't see a lot of point in importing top quality herbs, or planting your own and waiting until August to harvest it. The eBay stuff should give you an idea of how well the process works.

Traditionally, absinthe is distilled with the botanicals in the boiler, rather than with a gin basket or similar. I suspect that the sputnik will give a lighter flavor, perhaps too light, but there's only one way to know for sure.