Alchemy, aqua vitae, and Mixology: How alchemy gave us liquor

Without alchemy there would be no mixology. No cocktails, no spirits, no liqueurs, no essences!

Alchemical Origins

The origins of alchemy can be traced to ancient texts and recipes recording practical and artisanal knowledge focused on transforming raw natural materials into new, more useful, or more valuable substances such as pigments and metals. For example, ore is naturally occurring rock or sediment that contains traces of various metals and minerals. Some of the earliest surviving recipes record how to smelt ore to extract gold, silver, copper, and lead. Early artisans also developed techniques to mix the metals they extracted to create new materials like brass, which is a mixture of copper and zinc.

With its yellow color, brass can conveniently look a lot like gold! This close imitation of precious materials led to the concept of “transmutation,” the idea that one metal could transform into another. And thus “alchemists,” those who practiced the craft of transmutation, were born!

“You are an alchemist; make gold of that.”
—Timon of Athens, Act 5 Scene 1, line 129

To create our own transmutation, we are going to transform a boring old-fashioned into a gold-fashioned!

Lead into Gold-fashioned

• 2 ounces Michter’s US* 1 Kentucky Straight Bourbon
• 1/2 ounce local honey syrup
  (1 part honey, 1 part water)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• Edible gold flakes

Add your Michter’s US* 1 Kentucky Straight Bourbon, honey syrup, and bitters into a mixing glass with ice and stir until well-chilled (about 30 seconds). Strain into a glass over fresh ice. Express orange peel oils over the top of the drink, and garnish with edible gold flakes!

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It is important to remember that “alchemy,” although often associated with the occult today, was not a faith, or even a single coherent set of doctrines people believed in. Instead, it was something they did. The goals of and practices of alchemy changed over time and varied by regions and cultures. For example, by the time of famed Islamic physician Ibn-Sīnā (c. 980-1037), better known as Avicenna in Western writings, the question of whether alchemical practices could actually produce gold was hotly debated.

So, what does transforming metals have to do with mixology? Well, alchemists’ conclusion that they could make gold was part of a larger philosophical understanding of matter and nature. Alchemists believed that everything in nature could be reduced into its purest form or “essence.” And, if they went far enough, they might even find the purest form of matter, the building block of creation, the key to life—the “fifth essence.”

By the medieval period, many alchemists turned their attention away from transmuting gold to focus on the medicinal applications of alchemy. As the building block or “essential essence” of all life, the fifth essence was thought to be the secret to immortality—if it could be isolated. By bottling the fifth essence, alchemists believed they could create a super-medicine that could purify the body and rid it of disease. Believe it or not, attempts to cure disease gave us liquor!

Bottling Health

Distillation was the principal technique used to purify substances in the medieval and early modern periods. Distilling typically involved boiling a liquid to separate impurities and collecting the purified substance through condensation in an apparatus known as a “still.” As early as the ninth century, Islamic alchemical works record the distillation of wine with salt. This purified form of wine, what we call ethanol, was known as “burning water” thanks to its flammability.

Drawing on earlier Islamic alchemical texts, medieval European alchemists began their own experiments with distilling wine. The clear liquid this process produced looked like water, but also burned, a property that seemed to defy nature. Ethanol could also dissolve natural materials that water could not, such as resins, oils, and minerals. This led many alchemists to conclude that this clear liquid was indeed a secret of nature and thus of life. They called it aqua vitae, or “water of life.”

But Shakespeare’s day, alchemists were applying their distillation processes to other medicinal ingredients, notably medicinal herbs. Herbs could either be distilled on their own or added to aqua vitae to enhance its curative properties. Like aqua vitae, the liquids produced by distilling herbs were also called “waters.” Throughout the early modern period recipes for medicinal waters, often but not always including aqua vitae, proliferated. Many of the liquors we enjoy today—Cointreau, Chartreuse, Vermouth, and Amaro—began as an early modern medicinal waters.

Early modern aqua vitae was essentially brandy, distilled wine often with herbal additions for flavor and health. Aqua vitae also makes a great cocktail base. A recipe in the Folger’s collection, from the late-seventeenth or early-eighteenth century, called “Popey Water,” distills aqua vitae with several other interesting ingredients (V.b.400). The recipe begins by adding macerated raisons to aqua vitae before combining “suggar candy” with a pint of poppy water and a pint of damask rose water. After sitting for two days, this mixture is added to the aqua vitae. The recipe then calls for adding macerated dates, cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a stick of licorice. After “standing” for 4 days the final step is to add lemon balm and angelica.

The Big Poppy

• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1 clove
• 1.5 ounces of brandy
• 3/4 ounce Foro Amaro Speciale
• 1/4 ounce simple syrup
• dash of cinnamon
• dash of nutmeg
• sugar and poppy seeds for rim
• squeeze of lemon

To recreate this sweet and spicey combination, start by muddling raisins and cloves with 2 ounces of brandy before adding Foro’s Amaro Speciale. Created in collaboration with an Italian distiller who is also a trained pharmacist, Foro’s Amaro Speciale adheres to an ancient Italian tradition of infusing distilled spirits with botanicals to improve flavor and health. Conveniently, Foro’s Amaro Speciale is distilled with several herbs and botanicals featured in our “Popey Water” recipe—angelica, cinnamon, and lemon balm in addition to more than 20 other botanicals. Finally, add a bit of simple syrup—since they liked it sweet in the early modern world—cinnamon, and nutmeg. After combining and shaking over ice, strain into a glass rimmed with a mixture of sugar and poppyseeds. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and enjoy!

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