peridot

Hey, Bill! How've you been? Just looking at the dates of the most recent posts, this place is a ghost town. Seems forums in general are dying in the age of reddit and facebutt.

New absinthe from Huntsville, Alabama. I was very excited about it, so I got a bottle, added it to the review library, and posted a review. They're owned by Straight to Ale, one of my favourite breweries. Oh, and hi everyone! Been a while!

I meant the acridness in star anise. Minty is totally fine.

I'll probably pass then. I'm sensitive to that flavour and don't care for it. Thanks for the heads-up.

I never got around to trying this. Considering picking up a bottle, but I'm reading about star anise in it. How noticeable is it? As in, does it contribute that annoying acrid flavour that is present in most absinthes that rely on or have too much star anise?

Thanks, guys. Man, we're recycling Birthday threads now? Woosh.

Red Absinth: awesome, or the awesomest?

Modern ones tend to be heavy with star anise and most of them are oil mixes. Obsello is good, though. Easily the best one I've had by a mile.

We're not doing anything really organized right now. We're keeping things open and if anyone wants to submit we'll gradually build up a collection. If we get enough material we'll do a new volume.

In late '04 I did some (poor) research and ordered some Absente. To my uneducated palate it was pretty good. When I realized you could order proper absinthe I did (this was in '05). Again, I didn't know much yet so most of what I got was pretty bad, mostly oil mixes. None of it was Czechsinth but it wasn't much better than Absente. Still thought it was pretty good. Next order a month or so later I got some Swiss blanches and Jade NO and realized just how shit the earlier stuff was. Within two months I had bought nine bottles, four of which were good. Not really any cool stories involved, but I have some fun memories going through all of it from the terrible to the excellent with my friends. In '06 I joined here and then really started learning.

It is bad and they should feel bad.

Before I knew anything I bought an absinthe pipe. It's been nine years and I still have no idea what use I could possibly put it to, but it's pretty and I don't want to throw it away.

Fountains are awesome but expensive and fragile enough that they can end up smashed even a brain fart during otherwise careful handling. I second the idea of using carafes. And that personal touch is pretty classy.

Why can't the absinthe of the past be replicated? Well, my thought on that, with the caveat that I'm not a distiller, is that it's a combination of age (100 years in the bottle can't be matched by modern absinthes) and the fact that no absinthes by modern producers taste the same as each other either. There's a lot of room in the world for different absinthes, and trying to perfectly replicate a dead brand is less interesting to me at least than making something new and amazing. I mean, it's not like every preban brand tasted the same, either. If everyone was duplicating preban absinthes there would be a lot of great absinthe in the world to drink, but my favourite modern brands wouldn't exist.

It's totally worth it for the experience. It will put modern absinthe into better context.