Bob knows absinthe
The Absinthe that most people are familliar with is made by distillation, and is quite a recent drink compared to steeped absinthe however it is a lot harder to make. Harder still to make safely and more often than not local legislation has something to say about running your own still for producing alchohol.
However even without a still using just a few easily optainable household items and a bit of care, you can improve dramatically on the merely's steeped methods.
At it's simplest, and this is all I've done to date, you just replace tha period of macerating with a period of heating. I used a saucepan of water, a bamboo steamer and a heavy curved jar.
If as I was you're not using a pyrex jar heat it very very carefully, also only heat it in steam as you don't want to damage the oils or over heat the alchohol. After heating for about 30 minutes, a third of a litre of alchohol will have gained a distinct greenish hue, this will increase somewhat with further heating.
N.B. do not leave the heated herbs in the mixture to steep as this will turn it back from clean to the more normal yellow ish brown.
There is a more thorough recipe available at:
http://www.erowid.org/entheogens/absinthe/...e_recipe1.shtml
but that requires actuall distillation which may well not be viable. The macerating of the herbs before, and of a fresh lot after may well improve things even with just the heating in a jar method, but I have not tried this to date.
