HERB - Wormwood

[Magdalena]

Rauthulfr wrote:

> Greetings from Rauthulfr;
> I suspect that you will find that most of your sources also use tansy,
> pennyroyal, black hellebore and numerous other very powerful
> plants.

Yep.  As I said, I have the historical stuff.


> Artemisia absinthium is a member of a group of about 200
> species.  A. absinthium is the "official" or recognized medicinal member of
> the family.

I know.  I've heard word of mouth that some of the other varieties don't have the
thujone content, but none of my (admittedly limited) modern sources tell me one
way or the other.  If I find out that Roman wormwood has almost the same
bitterness without the nasty stuff, I'll use it instead, since Culpepper mentions
it.


> The use of volatile oils and spirituous
> extracts from the drug for the manufacture of alcoholic drinks is forbidden
> in many countries because of possible injuries to health.

The US is one of them.


>
> Granted, the amount of A. absinthium which would be likely to be present in
> beer would probably be much less than the amounts indicated here for a
> clinical dose, but I would suggest avoiding the use of this herb.

Much, much less.  The wormwood acts as a bittering agent in place of hops, and
would be a much weaker infusion.  In case I wasn't clear, I'm interested in gruit
ales, and I've got a recipe for Wormwood beer I intend to redact.   I'm trying to
decide whether to use common Wormwood or Roman Wormwood.  I'm fairly certain that
the actual recipe is for the common variety, but as Roman was around in period
I'll happily substitute if it doesn't have the high concentrations of thujone.
I'm also looking for artichoke leaves for the same project.

-Magdalena



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