thirtyoneknots

That book is on my to-get list, but it may have to wait til Christmas. I think Ruhlman & Polcyn can keep me busy til then

What is the brand, if I may ask? When Veritas opened the management was deep into a chestnut liqueur called Marrone, which was pretty nice stuff but despite my own desire to do something fun with it as well as considerable pressure from bosses to feature it in a cocktail I never came up with anything better than "ok" with it. It eventually became unavailable, supposedly due to the importer dropping it. I'd be interested to know if the one you have is the same or if a replacement is at hand. Can't help much with cocktail ideas though, the one we had was just too subtle. Stuff is pretty nice alongside a coffee, however.

Actually, there is a gin made in Germany called Steinhager. And under German law, it may be flavored with only juniper and no other botanicals. So, it seems that for a juniper-heavy, 94-proof gin, the best choices are Tanqueray, Broker's, and Seagram's Distiller's Reserve. Running close behind these would be Boodles at 90.4 proof, and Bombay Dry at 86 proof. Steinhager is weird, and I don't think it really works where a London Dry is called for. Brokers is pretty ubiquitous around here. I like it ok but I never really buy it. As for your choices, don't forget Beefeaters! It probably makes up over half of all my gin comsumption. The more I drink it the more I become convinced it represents the platonic ideal for London Dry Gin.

I would dispute that only to say that Gordon's has fewer accents on the juniper, so it stands out a little more with respect to Tanqueray, but I don't think the amount present is actually greater. It's just that if you wanted to show someone what juniper and juniper alone tasted like, you could give them a sample of Gordon's. With Tanqueray the angelica and citrus are strong supporting notes that might confuse someone. eta: I guess that is not necessarily mutually exclusive with your claim.

I actually had the opportunity to try full-strength (94 proof) Gordon's about a year ago and although my tasting wasn't a side-by-side I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything since I have access to Tanqueray. Aren't they even made by the same company? Our Gordon's suffices just fine for most any gin highball type thing, and what a price!

Bombay Dry. A bit heavy on the cardamom, but it's good stuff. Shame the idea of "Bombay Gin" now almost universally connotes sapphire.

I figured, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. Is the ambre still only available at the winery?

Hmm ok I may have to just do that. I'm grateful for the great price on the pork but the timing wasn't great. Unless the culture shows up by Thursday (not likely if past history is an indicator) then it looks like I'll have to wait til next week. Oh well. Thanks for the pointers!

So I've been making charcuterie of various and sundry types for the better part of a year now, and with my first dry-cured items coming done of late (flat pancetta done, tolled should be ready this week, next week for some bresaola) I had decided that dry-cured sausages would be my next project. I had intended to do the Peperone from the Ruhlman book in hog casings then the Tuscan Salami in beef middles but today I found some pork shoulder for a great price (for summertime, anyway--$1/lb) so the schedule has been accelerated and changed somewhat. I have the Cure #2 already, but I lack the starter culture for fermenting sausages, though I ordered it tonight from Butcher-Packer. My question is this: If I go ahead and grind, season, mix, and bind the meat for the salame, will it keep in the refrigerator ok until I get the starter in? I could then add it, stuff, and incubate before hanging to dry. It seems like this would be an acceptable if not ideal workaround for the issue, but I'm apprehensive since stuff sometimes takes a while to get here from Butcher-Packer. Any reason this won't work? Also, and maybe this stuff is better in the Charcuterie thread, but the instructions for starter culture typically give a minimum amount to be used. That same amount prescribed for 5 lbs should also be sufficient for 10 lbs, too, right? (I typically double receipes for 5 lb batches). I'm slightly unclear on how the starter functions--can one stuff the salami immidiately after inoculating them? Or does the entire batch need some time to gel together beforehand? Seems like you should be able to go right on ahead but I just wanted to double check. I hope the combined wisdom and experience here can help guide me here. I'm very excited about this but given the (knock on wood) very limited losses thus far to spoilage I'm a bit apprehensive about doing this dry-cured thing the wrong way. -Andy

Noilly Prat makes a Blanc? Do tell.

When I tried this quite some time back I did 3/4 oz Punt e Mes and 1/4 of Chartreuse. The drink was ok but I don't think I've made it for myself since then.

Tasting a bad Sidecar will not accurately tell you if you like Sidecars though. If I had to recommend a single comprehensive resource I would probably say the Esquire one, as I find Dr. Wondrich's writing to be hip, entertaining, and informative and the recipes are more often than not well suited to my tastes. I'll grant you that they are generally towards the dry/tart/austere side but adding a tsp of simple syrup will solve that for anyone who finds them lacking in sugar. My earlier analysis of CocktailDB might have been a little harsh but to follow up on Mr. Amirault's analogy, CocktailDB is more like looking up a word in a dictionary from 1911: it will give you some idea of the meaning, but the information is likely to be lacking in context and it definitely won't reflect contemporary usage. ETA: As for drinks in the sink, if a novice encounters too many of those they are probably more likely to give up on the whole thing, hence the need for a reputable resource.

Am I the only one who thinks that CocktailDB is almost worthless to the novice? The recipes are all over the place. I definitely appreciate the effort that went into it and I grant that it can be a useful place to turn to for inspiration but made as-is, many of the recipes there are questionable at best.

I would still maintain, as I touched upon earlier, that the idea of a "barbecue town" is inherently flawed, even if only for the reasons you list above. There is a saying in the wine biz regarding old/rare wines; that there are no great wines, only great bottles. I think by a similar token there are no great barbecue towns, only great barbecue places (that may or may not be in towns). It's somewhat silly to say that Huntsville or Wharton are barbecue towns based on single places, but that if Houston (for the sake of argument) had three great barbecue places it wouldn't count because of its size.

Are you referring just to their use in dry-cured items? I find synthetic casing to be rather off-putting both appearance and texture for fresh sausage.

For two weeks, with all that hooch in there, you'll be fine. As noted in my post upthread, I don't think the fruit floating in the finished punch contributes much of anything except getting you full; I recommend straining it out before adding your champers.

You are, of course, correct. Intellectual laziness on my own part. And to think I'm about to move to that area--for shame! I have a sentimental attatchment to Hinze's that goes beyond their superlative bbq but man I really do think pecan is a special wood to smoke things with. I have a plan to eventually get a group of 3-5 people, make a day trip driving to all the central TX places, and share a brisket and sausage plate at each one, taking notes, pictures, etc. Informational? Perhaps. Delicious? Undoubtedly.

If the criteria is that the town have one good or very good place, I can recommend Wharton (Hinze's--there is also one in Schulenberg but I haven't been there) and there is a place in Huntsville that is highly regarded for its ribs but I haven't been there personally. I can't exactly offer anything resembling an exhaustive list and some of my favorite places aren't even famous. There used to be a place near College Station, about 4 miles west of town, that closed about 2-3 years ago. I adored the place but it never got any press, which is presumably why it shut down. I think there is some decent bbq here in B/CS but I don't know if I would call it a "great town for bbq". Is there a distinction to be made? I think if you are talking about "Great towns for barbecue" then you are going to be in the Hill Country. If you are talking about "towns that have great barbecue" then you can go almost anywhere in the state I would think.

Good start, to which I would add Elgin, but nb those are all essentially representing the same style of barbecue. While some argue that said style is essentially the apotheosis of the concept, there is a much wider diversity to be seen. If you go West, for example, you'll start seeing more mesquite. Go East, you'll start seeing more pork (especially as you approach and then cross I-45). Go south(ish) and there's more emphasis on sauce. I'm hardly an expert on bbq, or even Texas bbq, but there's definitely more to it than the Hill Country.

How well does this work? I've always heard that peaches are notoriously stingy in what they contribute to an infusion, apart from water. Have you tried it?

My understanding is that the spirit called for in FHP's original iteration would have been barrel-aged, not unlike Applejack, and indeed using the original preportions Laird's Bonded makes a nice substitution. A clear peach eau-de-vie, apart from being expensive, probably has too much funk and not enough fruit for this kind of thing but I could definitely be wrong about that. Dr. Wondrich recommends using, per pint of spirit, 1 oz of Peach Brandy liqueur and making up the difference with more rum and brandy. Marie Brizzard is commonly recommended but I've actually had better results with DeKuyper, believe it or not, which also has the advantage of being much easier to find. I follow the recommendation in Imbibe! but do the liquor something like 5 oz DeKuyper Peach Brandy (NOT Schnapps), 25 oz (ie, a bottle) of Cognac, 18 oz Rum (Appleton V/X works great) to a pint of lemon, a pound of sugar, and 3 qts of water. If using Marie Brizzard I cut it back to 3 oz and up the other spirits to compensate.

Cherries would be good, not sure how peaches would do but don't let me stop you from trying it. NB there is already a fair amount of sugar in this one, particularly if your Catawba is as sweet as mine was, so you may want to be careful with the fruit. I may just have a limited imagination but I can't really see what gin would add to a recipe like this.

Recommendations on rum: You don't want white rum here, at least the earliest versions would have used something with some age. The recipe in Imbibe! says "St. Croix Rum" and the Cruzan Single Barrel will do quite nicely, but I imagine you could get away with any medium bodied molasses-based rum with some color on it. Flor de Cana 5 or 7 yr, Bacardi 8, Brugal Anejo, and Mt Gay Eclipse would all probably work well and are very fairly priced. Rye: Old Overholt works a-ok here, or you could do Rittenhouse or even Sazerac. I'd steer clear of anything extremely big like Wild Turkey, there's already a fair bit of proof in this recipe. Brandy: The recipe from Imbibe! doesn't call for any, but if yours does a VS Cognac in the $20 range should work. If you're pinching pennies, the Masson VSOP can be gotten for like $11/btl but it has some rough edges that may or may not work well in a punch. Never tried it in one. Champagne: There's a gorgeous little French sparkler I can get locally for about $11 called Francois Montand that is structured very much like a real Champagne. Not as complex, but still quite nice and in a punch it hardly matters anyway. Gruet from New Mexico works also for a few dollars more and there's an even cheaper one, also French, called Perdrier that is like $8 and I'd probably give it a spin if pressed. If your budget can afford some Piper Heidseck, I'm sure it would be awesome. Hope this info is of some use.

Latino markets, I think, are where you want to look for pineapples in Texas. Saw them 2/$3 around here not too long ago, and I'm not even sure that was a sale price.

I think as a contrast tequila works nicely, plus it came from Baker and doesn't need a lot of fiddling with like most of his creations so thats a bonus. I do agree that rum is superior, flavor-wise. Did a double infusion in W&NOP and it is fantastic. In another week or so I'll start trying to figure out what to do with it. Cognac, methinks, would be a good partner.