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- doctorfungi, on 04/23/2008, -3/+46Absinthe is a fun drink. That being said, don't drink it and expect to trip balls and see things. The Thujone in it does make for a slightly different drunk experience, but 99% of the stories you hear about the stuff are *****.
- ryanwarnersteel, on 04/23/2008, -5/+42Sugar, water, purple
- moogle516, on 04/23/2008, -1/+33"To put this all into perspective for you, beer has an ABV of 12%, wine 15%, vodka, whiskey or rum 60%, and absinthe…89.5%. "
WTF what normal beer has an ABV of 12% ?! Its usually 4-5 % ABV, and Normal vodka, whiskey, and rum is 40% ABV Also Normal Absinthe is usually around 70% ABV - nsummy, on 04/23/2008, -1/+33I quit reading when he wrote this: "Unless you break out a bathtub and have your g-ma dust off her old recipe for grain alcohol from 1930, this is the crème de le crème. You can’t get more alcohol than this without sipping rubbing alcohol."
Has this guy never heard of Everclear? - metapop, on 04/23/2008, -9/+32Not too long ago, I passed through U.S. Customs with a nice little bottle of magic from Israel. It was green, it was bitter, it was something that’s supposed to get you really messed up. But low and behold, after a night of merely 3 shots of alcohol, I wake up to see pictures of me without any pants for majority of the night.
While this can easily be described as “the night my girlfriend dumped me because of the amount of nudity on facebook,” it’s actually “the night that absinthe kicked my ass.” And absinthe baby, I got only one thing to say to you: welcome to the U.S. of A.
Absinthe is Legal
For those of you that don’t know already, absinthe has been legalized in this beautiful nation for the first time since 1912. No more do you have to empty shampoo bottles to import the highest concentrated alcoholic beverage into the States. No. If you want to grab a bottle, just find a store that carries it. Boing!
Yes, you’ve all probably heard from your friend that his cousin went to France and had absinthe and was so ***** up he started hallucinating. But most of the time your friend’s cousin is full of *****. But don’t worry weary public, I’m here to hold your hand and walk you through that mystical place that is le truth, de la absinthe.
But what is absinthe?
The first thing you need to pop into your head when you hear the word absinthe is alcohol by volume (ABV). To put this all into perspective for you, beer has an ABV of 12%, wine 15%, vodka, whiskey or rum 60%, and absinthe…89.5%. That’s 180 proof. Take that Bud Light!
Unless you break out a bathtub and have your g-ma dust off her old recipe for grain alcohol from 1930, this is the crème de le crème. You can’t get more alcohol than this without sipping rubbing alcohol. So if you’re looking to really party hardy hardy, you can’t go wrong with these numbers.
But wait, I’ve seen that absinthe poster with the sort of hot chick on it. Isn’t she adding all these crazy things to the absinthe and drinking it out of some strange glass? And for that I would give you a cookie because you just saved your ass.
I have tried absinthe straight up and it was a bad idea man. Don’t do it! Chugging an entire coke after a non-prepared shot doesn’t even cut it. Think of the bitterest thing imaginable, and that is the pure taste of absinthe.
Preparation
There are two ways to prepare absinthe to cut the edge: The Kosher Way and The Poor Man’s Way. The Kosher Way is a little more complicated. You pour your shot of absinthe into a glass and then hold a slotted spoon over it. You place a sugar cube on the spoon and then pour water over the sugar and into your glass. This will distill the harshness of the 90% alcohol you’re about to consume and also cut the bitter taste. Prepared this way is more like a cocktail you nurse.
If you’re looking to fully get a college experience of absinthe, you need to follow The Poor Man’s Way. You need a shot glass, a normal glass, sugar, a spoon, and a lighter. Poor out a shot’s worth of absinthe and pour it into your glass. Then take your spoon and dip it in a little bit of the absinthe. Poor sugar on the spoon, and then light the spoon on fire. You read that correctly, free-base your sugar (also known as caramelization). Once all the sugar is a golden brown (and you’ve blown out the flame), quickly dip the spoon in the cup of absinthe and stir quickly. The sugar will mix directly with the liquid, making your shot lose its bitter edge.
A disclaimer on the Poor Man’s Way: because you don’t distill the alcohol content, you will fully feel the power of 90% ABV. Chasers work just fine but be prepared to feel the burn.
Hallucinations
Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Can absinthe make you hallucinate? The answer is, sort of.
When shopping for absinthe you need to read the fine print. Absinthe is made from a mixture of flowers that when mixed around creates a different type of absinthe. The one you want to look for contains wormwood.
Say it with me, “wormwood.” Now that is what will make you “hallucinate.” Wormwood as a drug is used to help alleviate extreme pain. It’s most common use was for pregnant women in labor. So if you take back enough shots (usually 2-3, but hey, go crazy if you want) you will feel a sense of euphoria accompanied by your body getting drunker faster than ever before.
About this time is when you should hallucinate. But in all honesty, you won’t. The “hallucinations” you’ll experience are really things you might see if you were just really drunk. During my experience I saw a floating, fuzzy dot about 10 feet in front of me that I was chasing around. While that is out of the norm, it’s not like dropping acid or smoking salvia. Maybe you’ll see something when you’re out of your brain on absinthe, but most likely you’ll experience a very loose, high-type drunk that’s just plain fun.
Getting Your Own
A final piece of advice as you go off to the nearest liquor store carrying absinthe. Don’t rely on the bottle you’ll by there. While absinthe has become legalized, the U.S. is only producing and selling a few brands of absinthe. Most of these start at an ABV of 45% as opposed to the typical 90%. If you want the real good *****, you can personally import it from out of the States. As time goes on though, the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau will allow more types of absinthe be produced and sold through U.S. liquor stores.
And when you get a bottle of the good stuff, happy trails. - Brassbud, on 04/23/2008, -4/+23Absinthe Green is made of people! IT'S PEOPLE!!!
- Lowlypeon, on 04/23/2008, -1/+20Buried for being one of the most inaccurate articles I've seen on the front page in a while.
First of all, Beer is typically less than 5% ABV. Rum is typically 30-40%.
Second, the whole "light the sugar on fire" method is not historically accurate. At all.
This ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe#The_.E2.80.9 ... ) is the correct method. No fire! Fire ruins your drink. Ever since that damn Johnny Depp movie was released, people have been totally confused as to how this drink works. This guy obviously needs some more drinking experience before people start taking his reviews/guides seriously. - Ryan166, on 04/23/2008, -1/+17Beer has an ABV of 12%? That is really not the norm.
- tibs, on 04/23/2008, -1/+15What a horrible inaccurate article. I guess you can't expect much from collegedrinker.com.
Look up the fine print about absinthe in the USA and try hitting a site like absintheonline.com
Absinthe is a wonderful thing and not just about the "ABV" - Mothrog, on 04/23/2008, -0/+14"To put this all into perspective for you, beer has an ABV of 12%, wine 15%, vodka, whiskey or rum 60%, and absinthe…89.5%. That’s 180 proof. Take that Bud Light!"
Beer at 12%? Uh, no. Try more like 4-5%. Rum's typically 80 proof or 40%.
"This will distill the harshness of the 90% alcohol you’re about to consume and also cut the bitter taste... A disclaimer on the Poor Man’s Way: because you don’t distill the alcohol content, you will fully feel the power of 90% ABV. Chasers work just fine but be prepared to feel the burn."
Yeah, *****. Learn what the ***** distill actually means. Distillation is a method of purification. Watering down liquor would be the exact ***** opposite of distilling.
"You can’t get more alcohol than this without sipping rubbing alcohol."
Except of course rubbing alcohol is poisonous (oh, and generally sold at 70% concentration at stores, which would be lower than the ABV quoted in the article), and there's this thing called Everclear which is 95% ABV, higher than the quoted ABV of absinthe. Oh, and I don't care how traditional the absinthe you're getting is, the thujone content in wormwood is too low to cause hallucination. You'd drink yourself to death before you ever got high on absinthe.
Buried for being a shoddy piece of inaccurate writing. - emix, on 04/23/2008, -4/+18absinthe isn't as good as everybody says it is.
- MScrip, on 04/23/2008, -3/+14What the ***** is juice?
- doctorfungi, on 04/23/2008, -2/+13a) You don't need mineral water.
b) You left the absinthe itself out.
c) If you ***** the order up, you ***** the preparation up. - OwlFlavored, on 04/23/2008, -0/+9That stuff tastes so nasty. It's like black licorice combined with pure hatred.
- mrlivingston, on 04/23/2008, -2/+10Absinthe makes the heart grow drunker.
- talkenglish, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8This article was really really lame, unless you like listening to a freshmen in college articulate his wisdom of worldly travels and drugs. Sounds fun to me!
- asherchang, on 04/23/2008, -1/+8Also buried for the obnoxiousness inherent in the words "baby", "chick", "Boing!", "g-ma", repeating "crazy" a million times, and talking about "the college experience" and emphasizing a point with the words, "now say it with me". Jeez, this drink was the mythical "green faerie" which supposedly was the muse of Parisian Bohemia in the 18th century, and while taking a modern approach to it would be fine with me, this guy is just a douchenozzle fratboy and nothing in this article tells you anything more than what the Wikipedia article on Absinthe will give you.
- gib0r, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6YOU DO NOT SHOOT ABSINTHE.
- hoovcluck, on 04/23/2008, -1/+7yeah what the hell? i guess thats what happens when you have a bunch of rookies jump onto a fad and start talking out of their ass. everclear has more alcohol than this garbage. hallucinations? please, what a crock. it just the placebo effect.
- gabesobol, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6since when did beer have 12% and liquor 60% ABV. Can you really trust a blog on drinking from someone who doesn't have ABV number correct, I sure won't
- masterm1nd, on 04/23/2008, -2/+8There are different strengths and different ingredients in different absinthe though too. The stuff they make so it can legally be shipped to the US is weak. I've never had either but I would imagine that someone somewhere has brewed some trippy stuff.
- asherchang, on 04/23/2008, -6/+12Buried for perpetuating the myth that absinthe contains anything special other than alcohol that "***** you up". Badly main absinthe contained a toxic chemical that caused seizures, never hallucinations, and legal absinthe doesn't contain it at all.
- BlackJackJester, on 04/23/2008, -2/+795% Everclear. fastest way from 0-wasted. You'll regret it though.
- jpezzznuts, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6Booze buyer beware - almost all of the brands sold in the US (at least in Virginia and Pennsylvania) are hardly the same wormwood carrying products you can find in (parts of) Europe. Some of the brands have miraculously sprang up in hopes of attracting the unsuspecting buyer who hears something about Absinthe going legal. A few of these brands even existed long before the ban was lifted and of course do not carry the ingredients of "true" Absinthe. Just as the article says, your best bet is getting it imported or bringing it back with you from abroad, otherwise be very careful to inspect the bottle and understand if what you are buying is the real deal.
- swrostmore, on 04/23/2008, -3/+8What a ***** article, wildly inaccurate and uninformative. Lighting absinthe on fire is not traditional, on the contrary it was invented by eurotrash ***** to distract them from the fact that they can only drink neutered wormwood-free liqueurs such as "Absente 55."
- NuclearWookie, on 04/23/2008, -3/+8I have hallucinated off of absinthe. Three shots into it, I began to see minor undulations of straight edges, which is similar to my experiences on LSD. You don't see pink elephants or green fairies, but you DO hallucinate.
- cnot3, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6Its high alcohol content is likely responsible for most of the "hallucinations" people experience. They aren't hallucinating, they are just piss drunk.
- feelmo, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6
I was in Ireland and got to drink Absinthe. Absinthe is a liquor that they outlawed because it's supposed to make you trip hallucinogenically. So, I got excited because I like to hallucinate. So, I started drinking lots of shots of it. But, really, it's just a liquor. So, I was just getting ***** up... I wasn't even remotely tripping. But, after 10 shots, I fell to the ground and tried to force the trip. "WHY IS THE FLOOR AS LOW AS I CAN GO!?". But, I was just faking it, ya know? It wasn't a from the heart trip. "Why is lemonade not aiding?"
Mitch Hedberg - skyshock1, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5Mainly because the Absinthe produced today is done under very strict guidelines and procedures, and has little to do with the rot-gut poison that was being 'stilled in the back-alleys of Paris France in the late 1800s that caused all the hysteria in the art communities.
- dfsjdkflasjk, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4lmao
- SilverhammerMBA, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5"Dude, I just drink socially - it's not just about getting drunk."
- ElGigi, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5Hallucinating with absinthe? Complete *****. I tried this drink a year ago, and yes, it is very strong, and the flavor is the same of all drinks that contains anise. (like the Arak from arabs countries). And it's not the strongest alcohol in the world. Bolivian Cocoroco is sold in metal cans in the heights of the Andes, and it has at least 96% ABV. Its said that if you throw a little in the air it doesn't fall to the ground, because it evaporates in the air before hit the ground, as its almost pure alcohol. Take that, absinthe.
- passedoutghost, on 04/23/2008, -1/+5Because sometimes, people on dialup or for whatever reason don't want to click on a link. Also link could be dead. Did you think of that?
- insomniac8400, on 04/23/2008, -0/+4First, your only burning the little bit on the spoon with the sugar, not the full shot. Second why do you know what rotten anal leakage tastes like?
- insomniac8400, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Thanks, you forgot the part about where we can buy it here in the US. Most people don't want to travel to France to personally import alcohol.
- cnot3, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Its over 68% alcohol generally, how good were you expecting it to taste?
- Mothrog, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3My, my. It seems I've stumbled on to someone even dumber than the author... Or are you the author? Oh, and FYI, *****, there's a thing below each comment that says "Reply to [username]'s comment." Maybe, just maybe, if you try really hard, you can find it next time. Don't tax your brain too much, though. God know with what few brain cells you have, if you tax too many of them you may just forget to breathe. Wait, never mind, go ahead and concentrate really, really hard.
- benitojuarez, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3soda, water, purple stuff, all right sunny d!
- Berkana, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3I had some pretty expensive absinthe at Bourbon & Branch in SF, and I was disappointed. It tasted like licorice alcohol. As far as I can tell, much of the appeal comes from the fact that it has been illegal for so long.
- fancyj, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3I want some grape drink, baby!
- voodoozombie, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3*****. True Absinthe has between 90 and 150 proof (45% to 75%). 90% is grain alcohol, not Absinthe, and if you buy any that is 90% you have been ripped off.. The rest of the article is ***** too. True Absinthe is great, but don't listen to this *****. Check it out on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe. It may give a nicer buzz than regular alcohol, but thujone (wormwood) is not the cause. Digg articles are often ***** you lemmings.
- DeathJux, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Surely you're not suggesting that I made all that up! Such blatant deception would be unfathomable... even for Digg!
- skyshock1, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Erm... having consumed probably about 5-6 bottles of Mari Mayans, Sebor, La Fee Verte, Staropolski in recent years I can honestly say the little diatribe about hallucinations is complete *****.
Want a good aperitif that tastes basically the same? Buy Pernod or Herbsaint. Absinthe while tasty is pretty much all hype. - gothelium, on 04/23/2008, -3/+6Tastewise, hell no, but as far as how badly it can ***** you up, it's great...
- ic4rus, on 04/23/2008, -2/+5What a crock of *****. Beer, that is the lager the ameri-queens drink, ranges from about 2.9% - 4.5% ABV. Most premium lagers or beers in the UK or Continental Europe have an upper limit of around 6% ABV. It's only tramp juice like Tenant's Super or Carling Special Brew or most "proper" ciders that reach the heady heights of < or = to 8-9% ABV. And at this point you can really taste the alcohol in the beer so it is not worth drinking. Most wines reside around 13-14% ABV with only very rare examples any higher. The point being that any higher concentration of alcohol (that is Alcohol By Volume) starts to kill the yeast used in generating alcohol from the fruit sugars or other sugar used in the fermentation process.
The only way to get higher concentrations is by fortifying with some other higher concentration spirit or distilling, i.e. Port and Sherries. (Port as an example is red wine fortified with Brandy). Distilling is of course the way that we achieve drinks such as whisky, rum and vodka. These drinks are regularly found at commercial points of sale with ABV's of 40-42.5% and it's only the "export" strength liquor that can be found at around 47.5-50% ABV.
Absinthe itself is commonly sold at around 60-70% ABV. Trust me, me and my three house mates are all bar stewards and we serve Absinthe on a regular basis, using an absinthe spoon, sugar and water in an absinthe glass (the traditional way).
This article ceases to become believable as anything other than the rantings of a frat-boy discovering alcohol for the first time as soon as these figures are mentioned. Do us all a favour and research this stuff before you sprout it. Oh, and for the pedantry record, the Thujone from wormwood is a poison and will show toxic effects in the human body, WAY before it shows any "hallucinatory" effects. Also, you will be suffering from alcohol poisoning long before you imbibe enough Absinthe to swallow enough Thujone before you see even the effects of the wormwood.
So all in all, to use a nice pejorative colloquialism, the article is whack. - feelmo, on 04/23/2008, -1/+4
I was in Ireland and got to drink Absinthe. Absinthe is a liquor that they outlawed because it's supposed to make you trip hallucinogenically. So, I got excited because I like to hallucinate. So, I started drinking lots of shots of it. But, really, it's just a liquor. So, I was just getting ***** up... I wasn't even remotely tripping. But, after 10 shots, I fell to the ground and tried to force the trip. "WHY IS THE FLOOR AS LOW AS I CAN GO!?". But, I was just faking it, ya know? It wasn't a from the heart trip. "Why is lemonade not aiding?"
Mitch Hedberg - insinuate, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3I don't know if we have any purple drink....do you want some apple juice?
- KaneElson, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Are we reading different articles ? He says the traditional method is using the slotted spoon. The college way is lighting it on fire.
- phrenzy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2Absynthe (Lucid) was a big letdown for me. Just tasted like *****, and I had to force it down just to get a mild buzz. Maybe I'll try shots next time. But it is a seriously disgusting taste. It's like Jagermeister but polluted.
Will shots make you sick because of how concentrated it is? - KaneElson, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2The people in the comments annoyed me, claiming rum is 40%....
Inner circle grey label (A fantastic award winning Australian rum) is 75.9%, there are probably even higher proof rums, I'm no expert. -
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