Malkavian

Three eggs, fried in olive oil sunny side up, with a bit of crushed red pepper and cheese flipped gooey side down onto a toasted tortilla with a touch of barbecue sauce Mmmmmm.

Sounds a lot like that guy I mentioned; he was really into lambic, geuze and saison techniques. Right now I'm just waiting on my chocolate stout to finish fermenting (taking forever in this cold weather, my house is about the right temp to lager in on the ground floor!) and I just started a yeast culture from an interesting bottle of Scottish ale I found. Next up: Making a metheglin from an old sherry concentrate kit I got on my last day of work. Should be interesting.

I must confess my experience with blue cheese is pretty spotty compared to some of you But I enjoy Maytag...especially when the wedge sits forgotten for a few months in the fridge, it seems a little "extra" blue

I'd be interested in tasting it...with those hops it'll be pretty tasty, but the "organic" bit will up the pricetag for sure.

Tongo- One of my co workers actually requested some samples of sour beer from a customer with the intent of pasteurizing it for use as a souring agent in porters and stouts to add a little bit of extra "kick" ---you might try that if your inoculated porter gets too tangy to drink straight.

Have you tried Rogue's series of beers with buckwheat? Interesting taste there, but I'm not quite sure I enjoy it.

What's it mean when you read all this, somewhat fascinated, and don't really get any of it except recognizing a link to a bottle of whisky you've been dying to try?

If I could just find Singles of any of those Bard's Tale bottlings I'd try one in a snap; the price for a sixer at the local whole foods joint (only place I've found that carries it) is a bit out of my range for an experimental taste though.

I'd never seen it before either; I'll try to get a photo of it up in the next day or two.

Found this little brew at the Total Wine in charlotte. The manager told me they'd gotten a small supply in, and the distributer/importer had promptly gone outta business. Being a scottish beer, I figured I'd take a chance Smile Was not disappointed. Pours pale blond, hint of cloudiness from the lees being stirred up (Oops, my bad) Very balanced taste, hint of hops but mostly sweet malt and fruity esters. Medium bodied, VERY easy drinking. Now, the kicker? The stuff 'expired' december 05, so I got my nice Scottish beer pre-aged. I'd love to find a fresher sample to see how the extra time makes a difference. I also plan on culturing the yeast from the lees, just to see what I can do with it

Huh, brewing dry up over the holidays? I've got a chocolate stout going that I'm doing for a friend. Post the recipe when I can dig it up (What, organized, me? NEVAR!) Thing's taking it's sweet time due to the low temps here (55ish indoors) but I'm interested to see how it'll come out. Using Safale S-04 just for the heck of it. Also trying to work up some recipes usin Sorghum syrup...you guys ever played with that stuff? We have about 100# at work, got it in for a handful of customers who wanted to be able to do gluten free brews...but now it's just sittin there. I like the taste of it, just not sure how it would shine through once hops, specialty grains and etc are in the mix.

Bless your heart for bringing that up. ( this is coming from an unemployed college grad's perspective, FWIW) I frequent my current beer/wine shop (I confess, it's a Total Wine) over the others in the area for two reasons: 1) The staff are pretty clued in, at least as far as I'm able to tell, and offer suggestions that I'm consistently pleased with. 2) They carry LOTS of what, in most circles, would be considered "Cheap Wine" --in all frankness, I'm on a budget here. I'll be much more thrilled to find a tasty bottle that I manage to keep on hand, rather than something mind blowing that's Christmas-bonus type material (besides, everyone knows the Christmas bonus goes to Scotch ) now, I'm exaggerating some, but a staff and store that can take my low-ish price range and show me some overlooked gems get my undying appreciation. Point number 1 is common sense; #2 I suppose depends on the segment of the market you're trying to hit. Just a thought on the note of tastings, that store (maybe this goes for all TW locations?) seems to do its tastings based on the employee's feedback. I find that a bit more pleasing than having an event hosted by a distributor.

Last night the Saucer had some good specials, and I was fortunate enough to try Weihenstephaner original for the first time (yum!) and revisit Battlefield Black, brewed here in North Carolina by Red Oak.

Matter of taste, I suppose, Rick. I've got an "imperial" IPA recipe that has about 8oz of hops in it all told, that I really do enjoy; it definitely counts as "hopped out the ass", but the way the recipe's set up, it's not a masochistic glass of bitterness so much as a play on the flavor and aroma of the two hop varieties I used. (and to be fair, there aren't many commercial super-hoppy beers I enjoy because of the way I perceive an overuse of bittering hops)

I typically have raw oysters with lemon and a kiss of cocktail sauce. I could see a sweet chili dip going down well, but such things don't appear to be found served together in this part of the south

Generally if I'm in a hurry, my steaks just get a light coating of kosher salt and a healthy crumble of blue cheese. Simple? Extremely. But YUM.

Just to add my experiences to this thread, I found skate to be fairly palatable after soaking in milk for a few hours, then cutting into nuggets, dusting in flour and frying until golden. FWIW, the cuts i had were VERY ammonia smelling before the milk soak. Reminded me very distinctly of scallops in that presentation.

It turned out surprisingly well; I was of the opinion that it would be way too dry, but by some fortune it turned into good pulled pork. It WAS dry, but not excesively so, and being from NC I'm accustomed to 'wet' barbecue anyway, so the sauce mitigated that somewhat. I also believe we didn't smoke all day as one would do a shoulder, so the shorter time probably helped as well (sorry for all the vagueness! I'm verry much a 'wing it' type of barbecue-er)

i call this the "College cook" method. I go to my supermarket of choice and window shop until I find a meat that's within my price range (on sale, usually) and go from there. I improv quite often as far as what sides or cookingmethod or whatnot. It's rare for me to go in having a particular dish in mind, unless I'm just craving someting. I also usually only buy 2-3 days ofgroceries at once (this being due to sharing a fridge with 3 roommates during school)

So typically when I find myself with a whole loin (as happens from time to time) I basically cut it into quarters or fifths, and cut one or two pieces into thick chops, and use the rest as decent sized roasts; if I've access to a smoker one piece may go on there, etc etc......at any rate nothing fancy at all. I'm thinking to try something different that doesnt involve just chops or a roast, but so far I'm drawing a blank--- for me creativity is usually in the marinate or rub with this sort of thing.

I have some 8.5% scotch ale that I made in may of 05, it's aged exceptionally well, as have some bottles of IPA that I found in the cooler at work. In contrast, MOST of the other bottles in the cooler tasted like cardboard and socks, as they weren't designed with the strength or hop rate to mature that long (probably a 2-3 year span) An interesting exercise is to buy a bottle each year for several years, and have a tasting. Co worker of mine does that with Stone's beers when he can get someone to send him a bottle (alas, they don't distribute in NC)

There may be some subtlety of style or balance that I'm not aware of (We have any BJCP judges in here?) that would make an imperial ESB different from an IPA, but it makes sense to me that they could be very similar

I use sub-standard reds and ports to marinate pork shoulders before they hit the smoker, on the way to being turned into pulled pork for sandwiches. Adds a very interesting set of flavor notes IMHO. My first thought was, as you mentioned, in making vinegar.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that multiple distillations allow you to fine tune the process to eliminate more portions of the "heads" and "tails" of the product which contain fusel alcohols and other undesirable compounds

As a Christmas gift I'm looking to make some flavored/infused vodkas in tones of hot (probably habanero) pepper. Last time I tried this experiment I used a small bottle of Belvedere, which came out well, but I'm wondering if it's a waste of money to use such a good vodka when whatever subtlety it has is going to be washed out by capsicum. Any suggestions on where a good middle ground is? I don't want to use cheap product by any means, but since I'm adding fairly strong flavors, mouth feel and nose are a bit more important to me than any nuance of taste.