haresfur

This is the only small bottle at my Dan Murphy's so I decided to play along. Not bad. Seemed a touch watery to me but I don't know if that's normal. But yeah, I'll have no problem finishing the bottle.

Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology is worth a read, too. Not exactly what you are after but he talks quite a bit about the craft of bartending - especially in customer interactions.

Don't forget a PID controller will slow the ramp as it approaches the set temperature so it doesn't overshoot. You won't be able to change that part no matter how much power you have. I suppose your PID settings could be wrong or not best for your container but I wouldn't worry if it holds the proper temperature once it is reached.

My friends in Washington State say the early harvest was a blessing because the grapes were picked before the bad fires and the wineries avoided smoke taint. Was that the case for you? Smoke can be a huge issue here - eucalyptus smoke wine is really vile.

I'm sure many people will travel up from Melbourne to your new Bendigo restaurant. Welcome to the neighbourhood

By George!

Is there even a proper name for 'bubble and squeak'?

I have to say the commercial where they disparage dodgy meat pies from the service station as "Servo Pies" is quintessentially Australian.

I usually do both to get them uniformly even and thin with minimal tearing. It only takes a few whacks with the bottom of a fry pan.

Uni cafeteria used to serve a bar cookie with a stripe of strawberry jam down the middle that was called a 'scar-bar'.

Does this topic include pseudonyms that are less than appetizing corruptions? Like 'beef spew', 'catshit and mouse turd', 'goat meal'?

I was looking after a friend's kid one time when she was stuck at work and was told he liked to eat spaghetti with nothing but grated cheese. I asked him if he wanted some pasta and he said an emphatic 'no'. So I asked him what shape spaghetti he wanted and he happily chose the spiral spaghetti.

I wonder if you could do 'tepid-brew' in the sous-vide.

I use the french press because we have one, although the dog chewed the knob on top of the press part. ... and on another note, cold brew topped up with sparkling water is very nice. I don't mind hot-brewed ice coffee if it's doctored up with milk and sugar but find cold brew is better if you drink it with less adulteration. And cold brew with hot water is much better than reheated hot brew.

I'm not in the business but ... low pay, lousy benefits, crummy hours, high pressure, uncomfortable working conditions, often hostile work environment, lack of affordable housing, and yeah - hard work. Guess I'm only surprised the crunch didn't come sooner. Maybe raise prices and compensation until the workload and staff retention balance out.

I asked him about this and he says yes. He has been doing some experimenting with brewing in a french press and although the difference is hard to describe, the drip is 'more full-on'. I'm not sure what to make of that but I will continue with the french press brewing for now.

I would guess: T'hooft They used to have a cafe in Bendigo before the move. I think they did retail for a while in Mt. Beauty. Get Naked Espresso here bought their 2-head Slayer to open a second location. Haven't made it up to your area but it sounds great.

Actually Australia considers itself quite the coffee drinkers paradise, and IMO deservedly so. Especially Melbourne and more and more in other cities. Even in small towns you get a mostly passable espresso - certainly better than American Bunn Pour-O-Matic drip. I more or less started on darker roasts and agree they don't have to be bitter. I was surprised here at their lack of availability here - at least with fresh roasted beans. We have about 3 roasters in a city of less than 150,000 and that's because the one my main shop uses moved up to the high country. The purists here seem to be all in the light roast camp - thus the question about regional differences. Thanks Rotus, I come here for the expertise. I wasn't so interested in a roasting thread because we have those but maybe I will have to start if I want to explore the dark side. I do like a good dark roast for drip. I was buying beans for cold brew and thought that it might go well there. I have become spoiled and very rarely make hot coffee at home. My usual place uses a small batch fresh roast blend that actually isn't my personal favorite but once they run it through their Slayer it is bliss. Couldn't stand it at home in our cheap machine. The shop owner will work with new staff for weeks before he will let them make coffee for customers. And even then, when I brought Chris Taylor in, he remade the shot because Chris doesn't adulterate his brew.

Well it happened again. I was at a local coffee roaster and asked for their darkest roast. I got a withering glare and was informed that they only roast light. Like I had asked for a well done steak or for a vodka martini at a different type of establishment. My main espresso stand uses a pretty light roast and shares the opinion on dark roasts, although they are less supercilious about it. Pretty much every cafe in Australia uses a light roast. I'm getting used to the lighter espresso, especially when brewed well, but I kind of miss being able to go to the dark side. And I find that light roasts are often higher caffeine than I want. Is this light roast fetish an Aussie thing or is it a coffee snob thing? Or just the way they like it, thank you, nothing wrong with that? Thoughts on different roasts. Are preferences regional - is French Roast really a French thing? What do you like and why? Does it vary with brewing method? Am I terminally un-hip?

Kibble isn't so bad once you doctor it up a little.

I'm crook (aka sick) today so I headed home after an appointment to sleep it off. But feeling sorry for myself, I stopped at Eaglehawk Bakery and bought a lamb and rosemary pie and a Canadian date slice. I don't know what is Canadian about it but if you just ask for a date slice, they say, "A Canadian date slice?" as if they have another kind. The pie came with a free sausage roll. The sausage rolls are pretty ordinary but it meant I didn't have to share my pie with Spock the Dalmatian. The pie wasn't quite as good as the Mulga Bill pie, which is the same but with potato and, I think, mushroom. That one is named after a poem by Banjo Patterson and they pay homage to his bicycle in the bakery. I'll save the slice for tea.

My coffee jedi-master has a cold drip coffee system where the water is very slowly dripped through the grounds rather than the steep-then-filter style of cold brew coffee. Aside from the cool factor of the drip system, are there differences in the cold drip from the cold brew coffee?

Thermoworks makes an IR thermometer where the laser traces a circle so you can see the spot size. Your steel is is a good example of the usefulness of relative measurements - is it getting hotter? and of precise measurements as opposed to accurate measurements. If you are measuring the same thing in the same way, then there is useful information in relation to your experience.

I believe the issue is the temperature that the cable can handle - not the temperature the probe can measure. The type K thermocouples that most Thermoworks probes use are good up in the range -200 to 1350 C. So if you mount the probe through the side of the smoker, you should be fine. If you close the probe cable through the door, the way I use mine in the oven, you may need to be be careful. I did melt the cable on mine when it slipped into the gas flame when deep frying. BTW, most porcelain will start to soften at about 1300 C so the type K thermocouples are good for firing pretty much any food safe ceramic.

Power plant cooling towers (not just nukes) have that shape because they maximize advective cooling. Not sure that's what you want in a smoker. And since they use blowers for air-flow, I don't think the shape's ability to generate passive flow would be useful, but what do I know, I didn't take the course. Yeah, I wonder about ceramic fiber, too. The only downside I see is fragility. There are also some amazing ceramic coatings that could be looked at. They probably would have been better off going up to Alfred University, which has superb ceramic arts and ceramic science departments. Maybe they could have learned something about kiln design. Hint for anyone wanting to go into this business look at a downdraft design. Perhaps a miniature Minnesota Flat-Top. That being said, I think the real innovation is in the oxygen control - that could be a real break-through at least in terms of efficiency and ease. I don't know enough about the taste aspects to comment.