No, no. Fonzie’s wife gives it to him because Absinthe makes the Fonze grow harder.
I had some absinthe over Memorial Day weekend and it came from the Czech Republic, so perhaps we had the same stuff. It was 140 or 150 proof, and nobody at that party hallucinated either. The stuff was intriguing; I don’t drink but I’d be tempted to have some around if I had money to burn. I don’t know how much, if anything, that stuff had in common with the famous original drink.
My absinthe is from the Czech republic. No thujone. It is still (apparently) not legal here. No sale of alcohol 60% or higher. How’d they get around that? They replaced the 70% sticker with a 60% one, which most bottleshops remove. :wally
There is a reason ‘bitter as wormwood’ entered the language. I’ve never tried Absinthe, but I have had a sip of wormwood-flavoured aquavit. I threw the rest of the glass away and went back to the dill-flavoured stuff. :eek: The primary advantage of wormwood in booze is probably that it stops kids drinking the stuff, like a herbal version of Bitrex. Yuk.
I see. Well then, I’m going to put some spuds in a bottle of Everclear and call it Potato Vodka.
What you’re friend is doing is making an Infusion, basically making a rather nasty tasting everclear that has had wormwood soaking in it. He’s not making Absinthe.
Properly made Absinthe is made from water and herbs. Wormwood (Absinthum Aremesia is just one of the herbs used… other include white oak, and anise.
The idea being that the different herbs are allowed to ferment. Making Absinthe requires a still, just like making whiskey or any other high end alcohol.
You can go to Canada and buy a bottle of Hills brand Absinthe, though snobs I’ve spoken with online usually don’t think very highly of it.
Good absinthes, stuff with a decent flavor and appreciable “secondary effects” are imported semi-legally from Europe, specifically from France and Switzerland, though with new EU laws in place, the distilling and sale of Absinthe is exploding all over Europe.
As or those much vaunted secondary characteristics, most folks that have good Absinthe state that it’s much more like a mellow Marijuana high than anything else.
Current theories in regards to hallucinations and such regard them as fanciful, or brought on by the fact that the people drinking Absinthe back in the 1920’s were drinking it like water, which is bad because the alcohol content is so high, and because cheaper distillers were using all kinds of chemicals to augment that green color or to try to fake a good louche.
Personally, I’ve never been able to convince myself to buy a bottle, because the Good Stuff really does cost upwards of $100 a bottle… more than half of which is shipping cost. But I got into it a few years back, and researched the heck out of it.