Food - News
What Is Jägermeister And What Is Its Alcohol Content?
By RALPH SCHWARTZ
Jägermeister’s History
Jägermeister was invented in 1934 by German wine and vinegar-maker Curt Mast, who needed to aid his struggling business. After years of creating herbal liquors as a hobby, Mast eventually landed on a spirit worth marketing, and chose a name meaning “master hunter” and a stag logo to appeal to fellow German hunters.
What’s In It?
While only five of the 56 ingredients confirmed — cloves, ginger root, chamomile flowers, cinnamon bark, and saffron — copycat recipes have theorized the recipe includes everything from licorice root to juniper. Jägermeister is definitely vegan and — contrary to lore — does not contain elk’s blood.
How Is It Made?
With 56 herbal ingredients, production is a fairly extensive process. The ingredients steep in batches of a neutral 70% alcohol solution so that the herbs infuse the alcohol fully; the separate batches of steeped alcohol are later combined, filtered, mixed with alcohol, water, caramel, and sugar, and filtered again.
Nutritional Information
Although it was originally intended as a medicinal and digestif, and it’s made with herbal ingredients, Jägermeister has no vitamins or minerals to speak of. With a 35% ABV, Jägermeister is slightly weaker than typical distilled spirits and has four times the amount of sugar by volume as Coke.
Transition to Party Drink
In the ‘70s, enterprising importer Frank secured the import rights for Jägermeister and began a sex-sells campaign to popularize the drink. He handed out copies of a Men’s Journal article that called the drink “liquid Valium,” and deployed Jägerettes, shot-pouring women, to bars.