On this episode, we kick off the Mixers series with the mysteries of absinthe.
Absinthe
SPEAKERS
Michael Kashey, Connor Brekke
Connor Brekke 00:00
Hello, everyone and welcome back to The Ombibulous, a show where we discuss a variety of topics regarding alcohol. From specific beer styles, distillation, the brewing process, wine, spirits, and even a history of certain liquor laws, there's a fascinating world to explore. On this episode, we kick off the mixer series by exploring the mysteries of absinthe. Joining me today is Michael Kashey of Thomas Moriarty's here in downtown Mandan. I'm your host, Connor Brekke. Let's all raise a glass to The Ombibulous.
Connor Brekke 00:49
Alright everybody, welcome back. Today I am joined by Mr. Michael Kashey, owner and procurer of Thomas and Moriarty's here in downtown Mandan. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.
Michael Kashey 01:01
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Connor Brekke 01:03
So today, we're going to kick off something a bit different. It's not about beer. Today, we're going to be talking about absinthe. And absinthe is to me, and to a lot of people kind of a mystery. I honestly didn't even know it was legal until recently. It's kind of got this.. mysteryousness.
Michael Kashey 01:22
Yeah, we get that a lot. There's a lot of misconceptions about absinthe, what it is, what it is, and what it does and doesn't do.
Connor Brekke 01:31
Well, I was hoping today that you could teach everybody a little bit about absinthe. Do you want to break down kind of like a brief history of it for us and what it's all about, and maybe iron out some of these myths and rumors that people hear?
Michael Kashey 01:46
Yeah, we can do a super quick thing. So absent is a it's a black licorice flavored, star anice flavored distilled spirit. It's not a liquor, doesn't have any sugar added to it. That originated in Switzerland in the late 18th century, the first kind of actual references we have to absinthe would have been around 1799. And it.. from there, it spread into France, Belgium, Netherlands and throughout Europe a bit. So absinthe started getting started getting really popular with French soldiers. And a little bit later on in the 19th century, French soldiers in Algeria would be well, obviously, kind of fighting you know, for the, the French. I don't know if you'd call it Empire at the time, but whatever that was, and they would be also fighting malaria. So one of the very popular kind of remedies for malaria was absinthe, and they would do something called absinthe or mixing the called absinthe soup, which sounds super weird, and it kind of is they would water down absinthe with red wine. So after the French conquest of Algeria, they came back to France and they brought with them their love of absinthe. And then it started to kind of grow from there and really started to hit the hit the streets.
Connor Brekke 03:13
Because, the thing about this type of substance back then, as we know it is hard liquor today, it was basically medicine, all this stuff.
Michael Kashey 03:21
Yes, almost all alcohol started, medicinally.
Connor Brekke 03:25
So absinthe has.. kind of these weird myths about it being evil and toxic and all kinds of other like hallucinogenic and....
Michael Kashey 03:36
Yeah, so a lot of that started after... one, it started to get to be really popular. It's a First off, it's a very high proof spirit. So it it's distilled with wormwood, if you want to make absence at home, I highly suggest you don't want that can be super dangerous and to it's not gonna taste good. Wormwood is a very, very bitter herb. And this is supposedly where it gets its hallucinogenic properties. So, it's distilled with Wormwood which is going to lighten off some of that bitterness. And then it is... the Wormwood is added to it a little bit later through some for something called secondary maceration, this is going to kind of give absent its color. I in order for it to stay stable, it has to be high proof. So usually absence running around 118 to 120 proof. So, absinthe started to get really popular and it started to be produced so much that it started get really cheap. Towards the end of the 19th century, a bottle of absinthe actually cost less than a loaf of bread. So, everybody was drinking it. So when you're drinking this high proof of a spirit, you're gonna start to get.. you will start to see some issues with alcoholism. One of the big kind of myths that we get about absence is that it makes you hallucinate. Well, let's not necessarily... that's not necessarily true, but it sort of is. It wasn't that people were hallucinating due to absence. It was they were hallucinating due to like a severe alcoholism.
Connor Brekke 05:11
Right and looking at some of the, I guess more famous drinkers, we have like Van Gogh and Edgar Allan Poe. And you know, he kind of know the personalities of these guys and..
Michael Kashey 05:23
Artists
Connor Brekke 05:24
Yeah, artists
Michael Kashey 05:24
It was very it was really popular with artists, especially in France during that that time. One because it was, one, dirt cheap, and you know, you know, the stereotypes of the starving artist. Yeah, they drank what they could afford.
Connor Brekke 05:40
Enter the absinthe.
Michael Kashey 05:41
Yep.
Connor Brekke 05:42
Now absent is prepared and kind of a unique way. Would you mind running is through the preparation of it. It's kind of a treat to watch, I think. If you don't know or never seen it.
Michael Kashey 05:54
Yeah. Now, I've never actually seen it's produced I should say harvested, traditionally. I do know some people who have.. the're almost like Freddy, Freddy Krueger claws that they use to cut the wormwood. So in order for absinthe to be absent, it's got to be distilled with star anise, fennel, and then wormwood, and it gets its name absinthe from artisma absinthium, which is the.. the grand wormwood that it comes from. So it's distilled with those, and then it goes through that secondary maceration, and then filtered, filter that stuff out.
Connor Brekke 06:35
And then the actual serving is kind of unique with the block of sugar..
Michael Kashey 06:40
Yeah
Connor Brekke 06:40
..dripping down.
Michael Kashey 06:41
So you'll see a lot places will light it on fire. This started to happen in the 1990s a lot with Czech Republic. So while absinthe was essentially banned throughout the rest of the world, eastern countries were... Eastern European countries were kind of making their own Czech Republic It was super famous, but essentially they made wormwood flavored vodka. So one, it didn't taste very good. And I've... that was actually my introduction to absinthe then, for some odd reason I liked it, but once I had real absinthe I haven't been able to go back. Then two, it didn't get this thing that we call the louche. So to drink absinthe traditionally what you want to do is you want to take a little sugar cube, and then slowly drip cold, like ice cold water over to it, and it will go from like a bright green into like a milky opaque kind of color. And that is that color changes called the louche so these Czeck absinthes didn't get that so they're like well, let's see how we can make this still fun. And, enter the the flaming absent, the flaming sugar cube. It ends up giving it a burnt marshmallow taste. And it really strips away a lot of the flavors of absinthe. Absinthe is a pretty complex spirit once it's been diluted. You're gonna get less of that black licorice and a little bit more of the herbal kind of flavors that come out of it.
Connor Brekke 08:13
Yeah, I... I didn't... I've never had absinthe until I came here before and I wasn't expecting the black licorice. You know, I honestly didn't know what to expect. They keep... you know these myths and stuff. I didn't know what it was. It's like some Harry Potter drink or something.
Michael Kashey 08:29
You didn't hallucinate at all, did you?
Connor Brekke 08:32
Not that I know. I did see a Jackalope. But yeah, luckily, there's actually one here so
Michael Kashey 08:39
I've never seen a Jackalope here.
Connor Brekke 08:41
Um, so the legality of absence, like I said, I didn't know it was legal. Like Where did that..
Michael Kashey 08:49
Yeah
Connor Brekke 08:49
so it was leagal at some point?
Michael Kashey 08:50
With that we're gonna have to go, once again back to France. So the 18th... thinking off the top of my head, I want to say it was the 1850s.... the French vineyards got hit by this thing called phylloxera, which is an aphid. This aphid absolutely decimated the wine industry for a good 15-20 years. So during that time, absinthe was already growing in popularity. Wine, cognac, and then all sorts of brandies were basically wiped off. So absinthe, get huge, once the vineyard start to kind of make a comeback. People weren't picking up cognac. They weren't getting wines, they were still drinking absinthe. So the wine lobby essentially ran a pretty crazy smear campaign against absinthe, you know, saying it causes hallucinations. And they did.. there was a he was basically like a lobbyist for the wine industry who was... he was he was a teetotaler. He wanted to ban alcohol outright, but kind of knew that that was not going to happen, which probably should have waited around another 50-60 years because it did in a different country. But he did all sorts of experiments showing the dangers of absinthe he would inject absent directly into lab mice and guinea pigs and all sorts of creatures. And of course, they would convulse and die. And you say, look, this is what absinthe does and well, people bought it. So it was a French economist, I believe, who kind of looked into it, figured out the, the amounts that a person would have to drink, as compared to like the amount of absinthe that he put in to these animals. And in order for a person to hallucinate, they would have to drink about 700 liters of absinthe in one sitting, which you're going to die of alcohol poisoning long before you get to that. It was really shoddy science. And it was honestly a super effective smear campaign.
Connor Brekke 08:58
I was going to say it's like the green scare.
Michael Kashey 11:04
Yeah, so then, absinthe was banned in Switzerland first in I want to say it was 1909 after a farmer, had.. he murdered his family. He killed his daughters and his pregnant wife. And they really singled out the last drink he had was a glass of absinthe. He was also an alcoholic who drank liters of wine a day he drank brandy that day. I don't know how much beer he had. But he had some problems. And they really singled out on the absinthe and essentially got absent banned in Switzerland and then Belgium followed. And then France, not long after.
Connor Brekke 11:45
He's basically the poster child and he started the domino effect.
Michael Kashey 11:49
Yep. There were a few absinthe makers that did actually continue to distill afterwards. Pernod, which is actually a huge brand now, and it was actually ironically, the very first absinthe brand... modern actually, actual brand, moved to Terragon, Spain, which, where it was still legal, and they continued to just produce absinthe until the European Union essentially wiped out all of the French food laws.
Connor Brekke 12:18
That's interesting. I... you know, I again, I had no idea any of this stuff. But it's back. I mean, we're able to drink it now.
Michael Kashey 12:28
Yeah
Connor Brekke 12:29
It must have hit a revival point at some point.
Michael Kashey 12:31
Yeah. Ironically, it was... while it was first legal in Europe, first that started in the 80s. And he started producing it in the 90s. However, in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was actually an American, he was a chemist named Ted breaux... I believe I'm pronouncing that right b-r-e-a-u-x. He is single handedly the reason we have absinthe in America today. He got his hands on a pre-banned bottle of absinthe, and did chemical testing on it to see how much thujon is the chemical that supposedly is hallucinogenic in absinthe, and did testing on it with modern equipment and found out there is far less thujon in it than we had previously thought. And honestly, modern brands now have a lot more, sometimes we'll have a lot more of this chemical in it than pre-ban absinthe did. So he lobbied, he actually had a absent company in France that had their, their product seized, I can't remember the reason why, but he was the only person who ever had the product seized by the French government. And of course, he's an American. Well, he ended up winning a lawsuit against it and getting... actually I don't know if they got their product back. Because it was like destroyed or something like that. Of course, French government didn't pay for it. But there's ironically an American cowboy basically is the reason why we have it. He then lobbied the congress in America to lift the ban on it and in 2007 it finally was lifted.
Connor Brekke 14:02
Well, thanks modern science and cowboys, I guess.
Michael Kashey 14:07
Science prevails... sometimes
Connor Brekke 14:10
Yep, we went from if it weighs more than a duck it's a witch to modern science.
Connor Brekke 14:15
Yeah.
Connor Brekke 14:15
So, that's good. Now everybody can enjoy it. Well, I say everybody but I don't really know many black licorice lovers, but then again, it's kind of hard to find this stuff too... still.
Michael Kashey 14:29
It's easier now.... there's a handful of brands that are easily available here if you're in North Dakota. Unfortunately, that continues to shrink as we continue to lose them, but you can usually find some. There's also cousins then to like herb saint or pastis which are going to be.. those will be liquors, and they're not going to have the black licorice.
Connor Brekke 14:53
So as far as preparation and serving, you can obviously drink it as the way we talk just straight up but, you do different types of cocktails down here. Mix them with other types of things. Are there any pairings or specific ways that you really like to serve absinthe?
Michael Kashey 15:13
Yeah, we have a drink here called the absinthe and sunsets, which is it's take on an Oscar Wilde quote, who was supposedly a big absinthe drinker. Not too much actual evidence proves that he liked that. But it's essentially a absent Negroni. So it's gonna be absent. A sweet vermouth, and then a blitter... sorry, a bitter blood orange liqueur called capuleti. So it's going to be a little bitter little sweet, little herbaceous. It's a really popular drink actually.
Connor Brekke 15:49
I've had it, It's pretty good. Well, we went around the world with absinthe so to speak that a little bit of a history, hopefully busted some myths for those who're listening. If you're interested in absinthe, it's definitely something I would recommend. I mean, I'm not a huge black licorice person... it definitely scared me when I heard that it was black licoricey, but it's not so bad. It's It's a unique drink. It's green. It's, it's fun.
Michael Kashey 16:22
I will say when you drink it the traditional way with the sugar and water, it brings out a lot of the other flavors.
Connor Brekke 16:29
Yeah.
Michael Kashey 16:31
I've found that people will actually like it more that don't like black licorice at all, will be a little more open minded once they've had traditional absinthe.
Connor Brekke 16:41
And it also helps to have somebody who knows what they're doing. So...
Michael Kashey 16:44
Yeah, if you guys know any, if you know anyone, let me know.
Connor Brekke 16:47
If you are local and you do live in the Mandan, North Dakota area, you should definitely come down to Thomas Moriarty's on Main Street and get yourself an absence. So with that, I will leave you guys until next time.
Connor Brekke 17:03
The Ombibulous is made possible with Castos, giving creators the tools to connect with their audience and community. The music is courteous of Pond5, with over 25 million royalty free stock videos, music, photos, and sound effects. There's something for every creator. Today's episode was recorded at Thomas and Moriarty's is in downtown Mandan, North Dakota. I would like to thank Mr. Kashey for his time and the use of his facility to make this episode possible. And of course, the big thanks to all our listeners for all of your support. Until next time... cheers