Absinthe AH challenge

The problem is twofold: absinthe contained a questionable ingredient (wormwood) and it had an alcoholic content of 60-70%, stronger than whiskey. Absinthe has only been re-legalized in the US in recent years, and its following is very limited.
 
The problem is twofold: absinthe contained a questionable ingredient (wormwood) and it had an alcoholic content of 60-70%, stronger than whiskey. Absinthe has only been re-legalized in the US in recent years, and its following is very limited.

I was just added to its following tonight!

It is a sventy-six-point.five full problem...but how wou;ld you get around it?
 

The Sandman

Banned
Simple, really: have a much greater effort be made to crack down on the cheap hacks who made discount absinthe. Properly made absinthe simply doesn't have enough thujone to do much of anything. The problem is that it was fairly easy to find improperly made absinthe, which screwed up on the wormwood quantities, cut the wormwood with other herbs, and changed an innocuous if high-proof drink into a synonym for "poison".

I personally would love to try some now that it's legal again; the issue is that I basically can't find it anywhere and when I do it's quite expensive.

Oh, and you're also traditionally supposed to pour it over sugar and then dilute with a specific quantity of water, to bring out the herbals. This also probably helps bring the kick down just a little.
 
Abinsthe is always expensive, you cant find it cheap because it's so strong. If you invest in a bottle you'll have it for longer then you'd think because your supposed to cut it with water, I've done shots of it straight and it tastes like fire and death. Another problem is that it tastes like licorice and thats not a very popular flavor, the black jelly beans are always the last ones left.
 
Abinsthe is always expensive, you cant find it cheap because it's so strong. If you invest in a bottle you'll have it for longer then you'd think because your supposed to cut it with water, I've done shots of it straight and it tastes like fire and death. Another problem is that it tastes like licorice and thats not a very popular flavor, the black jelly beans are always the last ones left.

A sad sign of institutional racism.

I think proper absinthe would be hard to make on such a large scale. It needs the wormwood. Especially when it's rivalling cheap(er) and more flexible alternatives like rum, vodka and whisky.
 
It was already the most popular drink in France before the wine industry started a smear campaign against it in the early 1900s (at one point it was declared the national booze!). For the record it was never drunk as-is, it was always mixed with water in a 1:2 - 1:3 ratio, and mixed with a little bit of sugar. Wormwood as an ingredient has been proven to have no additional effects in absinthe, since the thujone dosage is minuscule. The whole hallucinogen thing is a modern myth.

My suggestion would be that sometime during the 1890s or so the French government starts regulating the absinthe makers heavily to make sure they stopped using copper oxide to colour it green. With a government stamp of approval on all bottles the wine makers lose their opportunity to make negative claims on the drink. With the subsequent popularity, the Swiss can't ban it since that would exclude them from the French market, and the Americans never get to hear any propaganda to drive a ban of their own. Absinthe remains a popular drink (with negative effects on the popularity of French wine) in Europe and from there it could spread to America via soldiers coming home from WW1. Once an American industry starts going to meet domestic demand the drink becomes popular there as well, at least until prohibition comes along.

EDIT: Though making it the most popular drink is probably impossible. Beer is just too good.
 
Abinsthe is always expensive, you cant find it cheap because it's so strong. If you invest in a bottle you'll have it for longer then you'd think because your supposed to cut it with water, I've done shots of it straight and it tastes like fire and death. Another problem is that it tastes like licorice and thats not a very popular flavor, the black jelly beans are always the last ones left.

Are you kidding me? I love this stuff! Hell, during this summer in Germany, I always tried to have at least one shot of absinthe a night....

But yeah, removing the thujone could be a start, If I remember correctly, the reason it started getting banned was a number of known alcoholics in Europe who enjoyed the Green Fairy were convicted of particularly violent crimes. So absinthe was associated with murder. Simply not have these cases, and it's likely that the majority of the anti-absinthe forces lose steam...
 
Another problem is that it tastes like licorice and thats not a very popular flavor, the black jelly beans are always the last ones left.

Not in MY house, they're not!:) (And you can't get blasted Tiger (Licorice and Orange) ice cream south of the border here. Grrr...)
 
Are you kidding me? I love this stuff! Hell, during this summer in Germany, I always tried to have at least one shot of absinthe a night....

But yeah, removing the thujone could be a start, If I remember correctly, the reason it started getting banned was a number of known alcoholics in Europe who enjoyed the Green Fairy were convicted of particularly violent crimes. So absinthe was associated with murder. Simply not have these cases, and it's likely that the majority of the anti-absinthe forces lose steam...

That is a myth. Seriously. Look it up. It has no basis in reality whatsoever (not any more than "ordinary" alcoholics cause violence). The thujone content in absinthe is too low to cause anything, and even if it did thujone "only" causes seizures and death, not violent behaviour. Some modern variants do indeed have a very high thujone content but those are still too low to cause any effect at all, and traditional absinthe had even lower contents than that.
 
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