Absinthe Herbal Liqueur

Absinthe is an anise flavoured spirit derived from several plants including grand wormwood. green anise and fennel ,along with other medicinal and culinary herbs. Absinthe is Swiss in origin, and was created in the late 18th Century, it rose to tremendous popularity in the late 19th and early 20th Century among Parisian artists and writers, and became associated with the Bohemian culture and notoriety.

Earnest Hemmingway, James Joyce, Charles Baudelaire, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron to name a few celebrated auteurs and thinkers who were Absinthe aficionados and it's needless to say their association took Absinthe to an unprecedented popularity and notoriety at the same time. It also has the reputation of being a psychoactive drug and hallucinogen, although these claims don't have any scientific evidence, resulting in Absinthe ban in USA and Europe for a long period.

Absinthes are of two types, distilled and cold mixed. Distilled Absinthe used a technique similar to Gin where the distillation removes the undesired herbal bitter influences while producing the clear spirit with the desired complexity and aroma retained in it.

Cold mixed Absinthe is produced using the inexpensive process of blending flavouring essencs and artificial colouring in commercial alcohol, just as flavoured Vodka is produced by infusion, it is this Cold Mixed Absinthe that can reach as high as 90% ABV. Beware that due to the lack of Absinthe regulations in many countries. producers falsify advertising claims like, referring to their product as "distilled".

Sugar

Brown Sugar is a sucrose sugar with a distinctive brown colour from the presence of molasses, it is a partially refined or unrefined sugar containing sugar crystals and residual molasses giving it a distinctive taste and flavour of crystallised molasses or toffee. The taste of dark brown sugar is described as a caramel taste with a deep molasses flavour.
Brown sugar is used in cocktails where a caramel candy or toffee flavour is expected.

Caster Sugar is finely ground granulated sugar. It is not as fine a powdered confectioners' sugar and has a little grit to it. It is somewhere between confectioners' sugar and granulated sugar, and melts in mouth with a mild spicy feel to the tongue

Vanilla Sugar is the regular granulated sugar infused with vanilla flavour, by using vanilla pods and seeds to flavour the sugar. A home made alternative is to use vanilla sticks or pods in a jar of sugar and leave it sealed for 4 weeks to allow the vanilla flavour to infuse. Or to use granulated sugar and vanilla extract and blend in a mixer, although this ends up in powdered sugar.