You try it, and make faces, and laugh along with everyone else watching you while you all make jokes about how awful it is. You put it out of your mind. Then, weeks, months later, you get a strange craving, and your world changes forever.
My uncle and granddad would have recurring arguments about if granddad had "ruined" it by adding sweet, which he always angrily insisted he absolutety had not done (he had).
So far I've just made cardamom bitters, but I've got a couple of recipes for orange-peel bitters I'm planning to try out;
they tend to use gentian or chinchona bark as the main bitterness component. (Plus I've bought the usual Angostura and Peychaud's.)
The real Swedish word for it is really "Besk" which is simply Swedish for "bitter". But people will often refer to the drink as "malört" even though technically that is the name of the herb (wormwood).
Essentially just wormwood infused vodka (done in varying ways).
But then sometimes there are personal adjustments like adding a touch of some sweet liqour to round out the taste.
Learned that looking it up is not so easy when you're browsing from Germany, where the name (spelled without the Umlaut) just means "place for painting".
(Found it in the end and would try it.)
I just looked it up too never heard of it. "Through the decades, Jeppson's Malört - a traditional wormwood-based digestif - has been thought of as a rite of passage or a hangover cure. For many Chicagoans, Malört is the drink that has defined the Chicago bar experience."
On my last birthday I ordered the "Frenemy," a shot of Malort with a Spotted Cow chaser. I vomited up the shot almost immediately. Malort should be banned from importation and sale in the state of Wisconsin.
It used to have a finish that went on for half an hour and a flavor that tested definitions of food product. Now it’s just a dry amaro with edgy branding
Comments
I first had it when I was in Chicago last summer.
It was an odd taste. But I've had worse courtesy of a few years in the US Navy.
If you ever come visit I will hook you up 😂
I've tried it. Not gonna lie, I prefer everything else.
though not every store has it in stock.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhTK7lNYKkq9wRfAX28es7aiAcMIY_iVm&si=yRNbE9t1L5m39Bs2
(I don't know what the commercial Chicago stuff is like, just the homemade real Swedish version)
(The Chicago one is sweet and has flavors besides wormwood.)
they tend to use gentian or chinchona bark as the main bitterness component. (Plus I've bought the usual Angostura and Peychaud's.)
But then sometimes there are personal adjustments like adding a touch of some sweet liqour to round out the taste.
(Found it in the end and would try it.)
https://www.eater.com/drinks/2016/4/27/11148504/malort-liqueur-chicago-sommelier-new-york-city
(Love Chicago but my family is crazy, so had to book).
The really interesting part is the aftertaste low in the mouth, hard to describe
honestly, can relate
Wait...lemme guess. This is stuff you drink after eating lye soaked fish (lutfisk) or that rotting fish in a can (surstromming)?