ChrisTaylor

Ribs. Hickory for about five hours. Spice rub was Meathead's Memphis Dust with my usual modifications (the most notable of which is cutting the amount of sugar--there's still a lot but not quite the 1.5 cups he uses). Instead of making a sauce--I usually make his 'adult' mustard-based sauce--I used a commercial one. This time it was a new offering from my local supermarket's home brand. It sounded interesting and wasn't offensive: it wasn't based on that stock-standard blend of really sweet/really umami, in other words.

They've already been re-used. That same pouch and another just like it survived two run-ins with the baggage handlers at Oliver Tambo and Harare.

Old thread but a product I've used in the past for both packing booze in my luggage and sending it overseas is available at a chain of Australian bottle shops. I assume such products are sold elsewhere, too. The shop calls them 'wine mailers': a cardboard box with a removable plastic pouch. The pouch is thick and balloon-like, filled with air on all sides. It's quite strong. I say this because I've deliberately dropped a wine mailer on the floor with a fair amount of force just to see what'd happen. The 'balloons' don't burst and the bottle remains safe.

Punt e Mes, West Winds The Cutlass gin and Basement bitters.

I've had them in a sauce/marinade a couple of times. I say this finding most things that are meant to be stupidly hot ... not. I mean, a chunk of raw habanero? It's hot--don't let anyone tell you it isn't--but it's not that bad. After a few seconds the heat goes away and you're okay. The bhut, though? You can feel that shit on your fingers afterwards. The heat on your tongue goes away after a while but if presented in a sticky sauce it tends to stick to your lips. And every time you eat or drink for the next few minutes it comes back something fierce. It's pure heat. There's not the, say, vegetable/green/capsicum flavour you'd associate with jalapenos or habaneros or anything like that. The heat utterly dominates the flavour profile. I wouldn't use them in cooking. If presented with some I guess I'd put them in a hot sauce--cut heavily with some much milder peppers.

How do you define a wine glass?

Really like this one: Doss Blockos Rare Pilsner. There's some hipster shite--this beer's from Brunswick--on the label about this being rare. Bearded fixed gear bicycles aside, though, it's a great drop. Will have to pick up more.

Armistice subbing in Americano for the regular dry vermouth as Cocchi is all I have. I liked it, even though I can appreciate that it's doubtlessly different to the original.

I didn't know until just now that Blair's--as in Blair's hot sauce--made crisps. Picked up an overpriced bag of the Buffalo flavour from USA Foods, a grocer that is exactly what it sounds like (shelves of hot sauce, junk food and, oddly, toothpaste and the like). They're pretty good. Just not hand cut by honey-skinned virgins or anything like that, which is what you'd expect when paying loopy import prices.

Bulleit rye. This became available in Australia last year but I hadn't seen it anywhere for mid-bottom shelf prices. I'd seen it retailing at a price ... well, let's just say not too far off the price you'd pay for something like High West. Anyway. Random find. On special, dropping it to mid-bottom shelf level (if you want some, haresfur, try Coles). I've had it before. It's nice enough for what I paid.

A Kindred/New York Times recipe: Giving Tree. First wine cocktail I can remember having. Equal parts red wine (I used an Australian Shiraz), rye and Drambuie with a dash each of Angostura bitters and Fee's Whisky Barrel bitters. Big. Sweet. Fruity. Bitter. Spicy. I like this.

Local and not. - Sam Adams Boston Lager. Very drinkable but still interesting. Really like this beer. - Doss Blockos Pale Lager. Interesting label. Citrusy. Workable. - Taj Mahal Premium Lager Beer. Least favourite of the various Indian beers I've had. It's for that metallic hop profile that reminds me of Leffe. This one isn't my favourite thing in the world. But it's Thursday night on the last week of the school term. And it's beer. So maybe that's enough.

Depends on the butcher. I mean, painful price tags and a sexy shop window don't make a butcher high end. In Australia if I wanted flash lamb I'd look at saltbush.

Is Abano anything like Nonino? Could you recommend any substitutions?

My Facespace feed was plastered with a recipe for this: Fernet Me Not. It's okay. Despite having different ingredients it reminds me of something served at Goldilocks, a bar in the Melbourne CBD. This something is simply a fair quantity of Fernet topped with Sarsaparilla. I guess it goes to show: damn near whatever you mix it with, Fernet will walk over anything.

A local-ish wine: Buckshot Vineyard's Zin circa 2009. I had, at one point, the 07 and it was fucking great. Maybe the first Zin I had. Or second. But either way it sort of defined Zin for me. Mostly the Zins I've had have been local ... and it's not like many people in Australia are churning out Zin. The 08 was merely good. Anyway, I happened upon a bottle of the 09. Opened it tonight. And it's ... cooked. It's like jam. It's not even good. It's just okay. I mean, I've warmed to it, but four standard drinks in you'll warm to any damn thing. I'm not a wine-type guy. That's where my tasting notes end. Jam. Cooked. Not my favourite thing in the world.

What do you know? I came home from work today and a mysterious package was on my door step. A bottle of an utterly and totally snobbishly exclusive organic (right?) nano batch spirit: Colonel Hawthorne's Jolly Good Gin. Using as much creativity as a teacher can possibly possess on a Monday evening, I stirred together a gin and tonic: a generous amount of Jolly Good gin and just a bit of Cascade tonic water. No citrus/cucumber/capsicum/et al. It has a maltiness that reminds me of, yes, genever and the St George dry rye gin but it's more restrained, more subdued. It actually plays well with tonic water. I mean, it plays well with a bitter tonic water. I could see it being maybe a little unfriendly with a sweeter tonic.

The first batch is ready. Well, it's been moved into a jar and it's going to 'settle' for a month, but it's ready. Tasted some. Clean, fresh flavour of green cayenne and jalapeno peppers with a fair amount of heat that I guess comes from some of the hotter peppers I used.

James Squire releases a special every year-ish and this year's--although maybe it's a 2013 special and escaped my attention these past twelve months--is a 'copper ale'/traditionan English ale. I like it. A lot. I'm fond of most of the Squire range and I reckon it's the pick of them. Hope it's one of the rare specials that they add to the regular line-up.

A Manhattan. Punt e Mes/High West Double Rye/homemade Boer bitters. Turns out allspice gets along with all of that. Lekker.

Nicks sells reasonably priced 1L bottles of Punt e Mes. They also sell Dolin.

You could.

I just made this with Bushmills in place of the Redbreast. I figured Bushmills might be a little closer than the almost syrupy Jamie 18. I don't doubt it's a different beast to what you made but it's lovely all the same.

An experiment with my Suburban Asian bitters that one home viewer, Evan, could attempt at home. A rum Old Fashioned using Ron Zacapa 23/cane syrup/Suburban Asian bitters. I think the flavour profile of the bitters (lots of star anise, cloves, Sichuan peppercorns, a bit of ginger) works with the aged rum.

I've made another batch of the Pickles, Pigs and Whisky sauce even though my first one isn't ready yet. I did this because my Fatali plant had a lot of fruit and I didn't want it to go to waste. I combined the Fatalis with, again, the entire range of peppers I could find at the local shops. Mostly cayennes as I figued the Fatalis would make the sauce very hot. Because I had a brisket ticking away in the smoker I exposed about half of the cayennes to some hickory for a while just to see what impact if any, that will have on the finished sauce.