haresfur

Makes sense to me since I usually call our cat Puppy (her real name is Pinot so I suppose this should get moved to the wine forum). Sounds like an interesting brew, no matter the species.

I think American rye is the proper spirit for this one historically and taste-wise. I am not anti Canadian rye but I can't see it standing up to the Fernet. I used nearly the last of my precious Rittenhouse. Rafa is correct in his clarification of what I made. This was the ratio listed in Kindred Cocktails although there is plenty of discussion about it. I used Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters. I think the Fernet was about right for me. It's there but this is a rye drink with Fernet Branca, not the other way around. And on a happy side note, I made two but correctly guessed that my DB would like but not finish hers so I poured about 1 1/2 drinks worth for myself.

I'm a bit late for Canada Day but I'm celebrating with a Toronto 4:1:1 using cane syrup instead of simple. Yeah even I would probably dial back the sweet a bit. This is one that really needs the lemon twist.

That's a piece of stoneware glazed in a quite well-known but somewhat finicky glaze called "Floating Blue". As you can see, when the kiln gods are happy, it is wonderful. The glaze is brown breaking to tan where thin - like around the rim and getting the blue highlights where thick. It really brings out the fluting on the side of that pitcher. The glaze contains a lot of the ingredient Gerstley Borate (aka Ghastly Borate), which isn't mined any more. The pot is fired in oxidation - most likely an electric kiln to cone 6. Common in pottery schools and I suspect this is a student piece. Nothing wrong with that. Worth every cent. How well does it pour?

It's a 20,000 L tank and I think it was under $2000, installed. I'm hoping to keep it about 1/2 full in case they need it for fire fighting (my fire plan is to wave goodbye to the house and leave things to the fire authority). It probably won't pay for itself in water costs - at least for a long time. But it's the right thing to do and I consider it part of the entertainment budget (or the food budget - same thing). The thing about small barrels is that they will fill up right away if you have any roof to speak of. You can often find used chemical totes that are in between in size - assuming you know what they had been used for is ok. I don't think I would put grey water from the drains on food plants - you can get grey water treatment systems here but they look like a fair bit of work to maintain. They are also moving to recycled water piping systems in some parts of Oz - purple pipe. I know that agriculture is a very heavy water user but that doesn't mean that domestic saving is insignificant - especially when you factor in energy as mentioned above. As someone said, "If you give a megaLitre of water to a farmer, they make food. If you give a megaLiter of water to a city, they make poo."

I moved here just before the end of a 13 year drought and people are generally still very aware of water use. We collect the water when running the tap to get hot water and use it on the plants. Sous vide bath water goes onto plants, too. For that matter the grey water from the washing goes onto the lawn but really because the pipe is blocked further downstream. Shade cloth makes a big difference in how much we need to water the veggie garden - well at least it means that some things actually survive the summer heat. And we installed this to harvest water off the roof:

So basically a boozy Tom Collins with egg white?

A lot of the pineapples today are extra sweet varieties. I think this started with the Del Monte "Gold" about 10 or 15 years ago. But there may have been a trend to sweeter pineapple even before they came up with those. My understanding is that you can propagate pineapple fairly easily from the tops so it is pretty much impossible for one company to keep their varieties to themselves.

Mountain Goat Organic Steam Ale. Brewed in Richmond, Victoria. They don't say if they use a lager yeast and there is a fair bit of wheat that comes out in the flavour. Hops are nicely balanced and the label is pretty low wank. I like this a lot but I think you could get away with serving it to insipid-lager loving tradies.

Thanks for the drink suggestion. I haven't made one of these in quite a while and I picked up some free limes. I usually use Ron Santiago de Cuba dark. I cut way back on the raspberry. About a tsp works for the syrup I use.

My theory is that if you are cooking the meat in the marinade the temperature will speed up the diffusion into the meat and a few days at refrigerator temperature won't make much difference.

Since he is good business for the restaurant, you could make up the difference in tips. Or when she has to serve him, you could increase her pay to (gasp) minimum wage. Or maybe just point out how much she makes compared to the people who make the food. The system is flawed so there is no good solution.

I freely admit that one of the attractions to me is that SV improves on my other cooking skills. If I can concentrate on getting the right browning on the outside of my meat without worrying about getting the inside cooked to the proper degree at the same time, that's a huge plus. I understand the point of view that perfection can be overly sterile (no pasteurization pun intended), but I don't think that's an issue in this case. Undone/overdone interior of a burger is a fail but the right amount of char is the art.

Sounds nice. I've never seen it.

Not something I've played with but... I would think that another advantage of SV burgers is that you can pasteurize the meat without cooking it to death. This may or may not be important to you. Probably not if you grind your own meat. But I doubt you can get a rare or medium rare burger on the grill pasteurized. And what about rendering fat? That will happen to the outside gray zone in conventional grilling but perhaps not as much when you go from browned to pink with nothing between. But it seems to me that the fat-is-flavour people could make a nice fatty burger with a different mouth-feel and taste by SV to the point the fat is breaking down just the right amount.

I can't remember if I posted something about this to the soup or pressure cooker thread but I've been extracting leek juice in the pressure cooker instead of sous vide for the Vichyssoise or cauliflower-leek soup. The idea is to cut the leeks lengthwise and put in the bottom of the pressure cooker with just a little water. I put the potatoes or cauli over top and pressure cook. Cauliflower takes about 8 min on high. Crash cool and remove the cauliflower. Mash the leeks in a sieve over a bowl to get the juice. I haven't done the potato-enzyme stuff but I think you could after cooling them. For Cauliflower, I just blend with a stick blender then, if I'm feeling posh, sieve it. Add the juice, and season. Add water from the bottom of the PC to thin to taste. I think cream hides the leek flavour but YMMV. Yeah, so different method but IMO easier and much faster. You might lose a little flavour from the leeks to the water but the squeezings are still very concentrated.

Enough fat to be like confit?

Since my trivet disappeared (I'm not accusing anyone...), I've just been using one of those collapsible steel steamer baskets with the centre post removed. I have used US mason jars and they work fine.

Unfortunately named? I mean he said, "Fortune favours the brave" - shortly before getting taken out by Vesuvius, but if that isn't deserving of getting a drink named after you, what is?

Speaking of American Pale Ale, the latest offering at my office beer club was Beechworth Pale Ale. Here was a beer that on first sip I knew it would be hard for me to score. I mean it had a lot going for it, dry hopped, lots of hop bitterness and taste, bottle conditioned. I should like it, but I didn't. Way unbalanced, just a crappy version of what it should be, but yeah, way better than say, Victoria Bitter and all the insipid Australian lagers. To top it off, the copy on the label was over the top nonsense and the Ned Kelly "A"s on the label were silly. It did seem to get better by the end of the bottle so I graded it a generous 6.5 for taste and 8.5 for wank. You will have to click on the link to see the bottle, since I don't want to get in trouble with the eG copyright policy.

I think its down to $80 here. I would bet they are seeing increased competition from the designer rye whiskeys and felt a new label would get more attention. With their big backing, I don't think they are going to be beat on price/value. But they could still think there is more profit to be made if they bump the price some.

Off the stove and back into the pan. It was easier with an induction cooktop, though.

What did you think that extra tap was for?

Thanks, that is pretty vague on what makes the style distinctive, though. IIR the diacytl is what gives beer the buttery flavour that they associate with English Pale Ale, so this would imply that the difference is mainly in the yeast and perhaps softer water for the APA. And of course more hops, because American beer tends to the extremes. I still associate the citrusy hops with APA, which I think can be traced back to the early WA State microbrew, Grant's Scottish Ale (now sold out to some major and ironically in no way like a Scottish Ale, but that was good marketing). Incidentally, I think of English Pale Ale, especially real ale, as usually having a low ABV and lower hop bitterness leaning towards the malty. Must use English hop varieties or similar offshoots. The water hardness varies by region, of course so isn't anything that defines the style. I can't say buttery has jumped out at me but that doesn't mean it isn't there. BTW, I'm really not a style-Nazi but sometimes it helps to have an indication of what you should be getting. Context is everything and I find really estery beer more acceptable if it is a Scottish Ale than if I get a glass of something billed as something else.

That sounds odd to me. I mean, when I think of an American Pale Ale (interesting that that has become a distinct style here - is it considered one in the US these days?) Anyway, it seems to me that this is pretty much defined by Cascade hop flavour/aroma or perhaps a very close relative of Cascade. I mean if you put Hallertau or Goldings hops in, it wouldn't be much of an American Pale Ale IMO.