Hassouni

St Bernardus Abt 12, in the hope that it is much like Westvleteren 12 as I've heard. It's definitely in the ballpark, but sadly not nearly at the same level as the Westvleteren. Oh well.

Hoohooo what do they feed the cattle with, cocaine?

Caña Brava, Ferrand Dry Curaçao, Doorly's Macaw White...what else...oh and a friend got me a L of Wood's 100 Demerara Navy Rum from Heathrow...also a gift of Yeni Rakı (but I prefer the Lebanese stuff)

From Wikipedia: In short, it mixes very nicely with strong booze as the sweet component of a classic Caribbean punch!

Well assume 750ml of booze, a 1L iSi, and 2 nitrous charges

Well, that solves that. Merci! How about No. 2?

Developing recipes for the next Green Zone event. Today we have the brand new: Fuck ISIS! Punch Vimto, WNOP, Lemon, and some other goodies.

Morgenthaler has an iSi video where he "barrel ages" a negroni in his iSi with oak chips. However, he lets it rest overnight before venting the gas out. I was wondering what the purpose of that is - and does letting it rest longer infuse more flavor in? For example, in one of Dave Arnold's videos, he infuse mint into water and charges it with CO2 to create mint soda water. However, he doesn't really let it rest, and the water barely turns green. When I've infused mint into Everclear, the booze turns bright green within a couple hours or so. So here's what I don't get. 1) The instant infusion thing is the equivalent of a couple weeks traditional infusion. So how come the mint in Dave Arnold's video didn't turn the water bright green? Does water not extract the color as much? 2) What is an overnight rest + nitrogen cavitation the equivalent to in terms of traditional infusion/aging?

I have one of those Oxo ones. It's OK. Gets dinged up easily and probably isn't the greatest on the knife itself. As for homemade boards from birdseye maple, want to make me one?

Anybody tried their cold brew coffee concentrate? $8 for the equivalent of 12 8oz coffees...or is it 8 12 oz...either way, 96 oz of coffee.

So, on that JD chips + WNOP, I had a thought. Appleton actually does use JD barrels, so that's pretty on the money as far as type of chips to buy. However, given that they see the inside of the charred barrel only, and the chips are mostly uncharred, would it not make sense to char the entirety of the chips to be infused, with a torch or on a gas stove, or something? As they are, I imagine there is a lot of raw oak taste.

So, for all the vermouth makers, I've made 2 batches of vermouth so far and have some questions: 1. How is the maceration vs simmering? Simmering makes the wine INCREDIBLY murky. I feel like if I did an iSi infusion (so, a lighting fast maceration), it'd be a lot less so, but I wonder how intense the flavoring would be. 2. For those that add their herbs and spices to a portion of wine then add it back to the rest, do you have to make the spicing super strong? I find that when I add it back to the untouched wine, what was a fairly concentrated spiced wine has become barely noticeable 3. Anyone infuse the brandy they use? I did an iSi infusion of the main spicing ingredients into a few ounces of brandy to try to bring some more flavor in, though it probably wasn't intense enough. 4. re: Mouthfeel. I added caramel syrup (the nearly black kind as Amirault mentioned above), and a bit of 2.5ish:1 Demerara syrup to get color and sweetness, and hopefully a little richness in the texture, but it wasn't quite there. I then added a slug of port as mentioned above, and it really just tastes like some kind of wine now. Do commercial producers add glycerine or something? 5. For Kerry specifically but anyone else who's tried gelatin fining: does it really need to settle for 8 days?

Don't worry, the Fujiwara Teruyasu Shirogami #1 is said to be even better than the Goko - the Goko apparently is close to it but the former has a special something. And furthermore, apparently nothing surpasses honyaki blades. I was in the market for a Yamashin 240mm gyutou (also Shirogami AKA white paper #1) to learn better sharpening, but at $104, this Goko apparently represents several jumps up in performance for less than $50 more. Now all I have to do is get some stones! ...and maybe some strops. ....and a better, edge-grain cutting board... .....and a saya for the knife.... .....and a bunch of towels to wipe off the reactive carbon blade.... agh hell, and the Death & Co book is coming out, AND Cocktail Kingdom is releasing a new line of mixing glasses...and....when will these purchases end! (sorry, doing more drinks-making than food-chopping lately)

(now I have to get some decent stones to maintain the edge that hand-made Shirogami deserves...)

Dammit gfron, I saw this for sale on the CKTG forum second hand for $40 off the new price and had to pull the trigger (bottom one) Which is this, one of the more acclaimed Shirogami #1 knives on the site: http://www.chefknivestogo.com/gokogyuto240mm.html

Well that's no good. As for centrifuges, I already have way way way too much shit in my kitchen...

I saw some homemade liqueur blog that said first strain through a nylon bag or cheesecloth, then do two rounds of paper towel filtering, then do coffee filters. Maybe this is the way to go? I ordered a fine nylon straining bag from Amazon that allegedly strains out a lot of gunk. I'll report back.... Alternatively, there's the gelatin fining approach (both frozen and non-frozen varieties), and Dave Arnold's agar clarifying technique...may try these too.

Unless those knives are different, neither gyutous nor nakiris nor petties are single bevel knives

Yeah, one of the biggest annoyances with getting into these knives is the stones! They can cost as much as the knives themselves (although prob not your honyaki)

So seriously how the bloody bastard in hell do you filter or clarify infusions at anything but a snail's pace? I spent a lot of money on a Büchner funnel setup, which is a giant pain in the ass (the filters are crazy thick and pumping the air out isn't the most fun activity), and then I saw Jamie Boudreau's post agreeing with me that it's a pain in the ass, and that he now uses a Pur water filter. I got the one linked in his blog, and it's operating at a slower-than-glacial rate. He says it takes a few hours, but that's for 750ml, I'm only doing about 120-130, and at the rate it's going, it may take days. Is gelatin the way to go? Büchner funnel with normal coffee filters?

rotuts, it's sold like that

Oh that, yes, I saw already. You really can't top that!

Oh come on...how can you top those two? You don't have an actual katana coming, do you?

Maaan so you have a Fujiwara Teruyasu AND a Honyaki? Intensely jealous over here!

Oh shiiiit those honyaki knives are about as close as one can get to a proper katana! Congrats!