Absinthe. It's the drink of legend, and featured in many horror stories. It's shrouded in mystery, but modern chemistry is now shedding light in that greenish fog. Lovecraft, the chemist-wanna-be, would appreciate this article.
In the Chemical and Engineering News of 16 June 2008, a letter to the editor revealed this information.
“Absinthe Myths Finally Laid To Rest” was an interesting read, but those of us at Amalgamated Brewing disagree with the once-and-for-all evidence claimed by Dirk W. Lachenmeier (C&EN, May 5, page 42). Absinthe, like any alcoholic beverage, is a living, dynamic moiety and cannot be assumed to go unchanged during many years of storage. To the contrary, the complex mixture of volatile components in the “green fairy” makes this beverage particularly susceptible to chemical and physical changes.
Thujone is fairly volatile (BP 84 °C), and this small aliphatic ketone can be assumed to be rather reactive. We prepared a fresh 100-ppm standard of α-thujone (Aldrich 89231; 1058112 24706082) in a 50% ethanol/water solution to quantify levels of thujone in wormwood samples. The standard was stored in several tightly sealed glass vials to be used at a later date. After four months, these standards were found to contain less than 10 ppm thujone when compared with a freshly prepared solution.
To the credit of the study, we have also found the thujone content of the wormwood samples tested to date to be very low. Following a typical recipe, the highest theoretical concentration of thujone in absinthe produced from these wormwood samples would be less than 5 ppm.
Mike StapletonSt. Louis
Showing posts with label thujone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thujone. Show all posts
Friday, June 20, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Absinthe Part 2
From the SF source-book:
Absinthe is a 140-proof green liqueur made from herbs like fennel, anise, and the exceptionally bitter leaves of Artemisia absinthium. That last ingredient, also known as wormwood, gives the drink its name - and its sinister reputation.
A chemist, Breaux, has made understanding the drink his life's work. He has pored over hundred-year-old texts, few of them in English. The more he's learned, the more he's felt compelled to use his knowledge of chemistry to crack the absinthe code.
Using the GCMS (gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer) apparatus, he's able to break the liqueur down into its component molecules.
One of the ingredients is thujone, a compound in wormwood that is toxic if it's ingested, capable of causing violent seizures and kidney failure. Breaux hands me a bottle of pure liquid thujone. "Take a whiff," he says with an evil grin. I recoil at the odor - it's like menthol laced with napalm. This is the noxious chemical compound responsible for absinthe's bad reputation.
(Absinthe was first distilled in 1792 in Switzerland, where it was marketed as a medicinal elixir, a cure for stomach ailments. High concentrations of chlorophyll gave it a rich olive color. )
Absinthe came to be associated with artists and Moulin Rouge bohemians. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Van Gogh, and Picasso were devotees. Toulouse-Lautrec carried some in a hollowed-out cane. Oscar Wilde wrote, "What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?"
Soon absinthe was the social lubricant of choice for a broad swath of Europeans - artists and otherwise. In 1874, the French sipped 700,000 liters of the stuff; by the turn of the century, consumption had shot up to 36 million liters, driven in part by a phylloxera infestation that had devastated the wine-grape harvest.
By 1905, the fear of thujone in the liquer caused it to be called the green menace and political backlash and anecdotes stirred the press. Such as when Swiss farmer Jean Lanfray shot his pregnant wife and two daughters after downing two glasses. It was banned by WWI.
Absinthe is a 140-proof green liqueur made from herbs like fennel, anise, and the exceptionally bitter leaves of Artemisia absinthium. That last ingredient, also known as wormwood, gives the drink its name - and its sinister reputation.
A chemist, Breaux, has made understanding the drink his life's work. He has pored over hundred-year-old texts, few of them in English. The more he's learned, the more he's felt compelled to use his knowledge of chemistry to crack the absinthe code.
Using the GCMS (gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer) apparatus, he's able to break the liqueur down into its component molecules.
One of the ingredients is thujone, a compound in wormwood that is toxic if it's ingested, capable of causing violent seizures and kidney failure. Breaux hands me a bottle of pure liquid thujone. "Take a whiff," he says with an evil grin. I recoil at the odor - it's like menthol laced with napalm. This is the noxious chemical compound responsible for absinthe's bad reputation.
(Absinthe was first distilled in 1792 in Switzerland, where it was marketed as a medicinal elixir, a cure for stomach ailments. High concentrations of chlorophyll gave it a rich olive color. )
Absinthe came to be associated with artists and Moulin Rouge bohemians. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Van Gogh, and Picasso were devotees. Toulouse-Lautrec carried some in a hollowed-out cane. Oscar Wilde wrote, "What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?"
Soon absinthe was the social lubricant of choice for a broad swath of Europeans - artists and otherwise. In 1874, the French sipped 700,000 liters of the stuff; by the turn of the century, consumption had shot up to 36 million liters, driven in part by a phylloxera infestation that had devastated the wine-grape harvest.
By 1905, the fear of thujone in the liquer caused it to be called the green menace and political backlash and anecdotes stirred the press. Such as when Swiss farmer Jean Lanfray shot his pregnant wife and two daughters after downing two glasses. It was banned by WWI.
Absinthe: Part 1
As I type this, I can't recall a particular quotation by Lovecraft on absinthe, but as a chemist this is too neat not to blog. I foud it in today's Courier-Journal (Louisville) p. E3 extracted from langmuir of the American Chemical Society - a journal of surface physical-chemistry.
A unique characteristic of absinthe (shared by other oil containing liqueres such as pernod and ouzo) is that it turns cloudy upon addition of water. Excess water alters the oil-alcohol-water balance and causes the oil particles to pop out of solution and thus defracting light. Once out of solution, the particles of oil begin to gradualy coalesce over a period of weeks and that oil rises to the top of the solution.
The plant oils are usually soluble in at least 45% alcohol.
Theoretical calculations by a team of Dutch chemists led by Erik van der Linden of Wageningen University explored the physics of this phenomenon and showed that the more watery the mixture, supposedly the longer the drink remained cloudy. That's because it should be harder for the oil molecules to coalesce into large droplets and therefore the longer it will take for the oil to “cream out” on the surface.
The Dutch experiments, however, showed just the opposite.
The more alcoholic the mixture, the longer the cloudiness lasted and the slower the creaming.
What is known about molecular activity at the interface of oil droplets and water, the solubility of oil in the mixture and the density issues involved is “not sufficient to explain the results for these unique three-component systems,” the authors write.
Three component systems are hard to predict since not all molecular forces are easily estimated.
Lovecraft, as a chemist, would have appreciated the experiment.
A unique characteristic of absinthe (shared by other oil containing liqueres such as pernod and ouzo) is that it turns cloudy upon addition of water. Excess water alters the oil-alcohol-water balance and causes the oil particles to pop out of solution and thus defracting light. Once out of solution, the particles of oil begin to gradualy coalesce over a period of weeks and that oil rises to the top of the solution.
The plant oils are usually soluble in at least 45% alcohol.
Theoretical calculations by a team of Dutch chemists led by Erik van der Linden of Wageningen University explored the physics of this phenomenon and showed that the more watery the mixture, supposedly the longer the drink remained cloudy. That's because it should be harder for the oil molecules to coalesce into large droplets and therefore the longer it will take for the oil to “cream out” on the surface.
The Dutch experiments, however, showed just the opposite.
The more alcoholic the mixture, the longer the cloudiness lasted and the slower the creaming.
What is known about molecular activity at the interface of oil droplets and water, the solubility of oil in the mixture and the density issues involved is “not sufficient to explain the results for these unique three-component systems,” the authors write.
Three component systems are hard to predict since not all molecular forces are easily estimated.
Lovecraft, as a chemist, would have appreciated the experiment.
Lovecraft Joke
Seen at He's Just Had Coffee
I’ve told this a few times, but never written it down. Here goes.
HP Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.
As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.
They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching - the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.
A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.
Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past - the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.
Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…
“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”
More
I’ve told this a few times, but never written it down. Here goes.
HP Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.
As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.
They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching - the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.
A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.
Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past - the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.
Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…
“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”
More
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