cdh

Marc Vetri has been instagramming his panettone experiments... see, e.g. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyQrR8nO_h1/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

An unexpected behavior I've noticed is that when the thing being sealed is 1) wet AND 2) at or above room temp, pulling the vacuum boils the liquid and inflates the bag before it gets sealed... so when it is sealed, the bag is way puffed up and doesn't seal as tightly as a plain old food saver does... Anybody else experience this, and have thoughts on dealing with it? Vac time up or vac time down?

You want quantitative substantiation? OK. Devise a quantitative and reproducible measure of bitterness that more people than you agree on and can implement. Once you have that in hand, then we can perhaps interrogate your priors, e.g. "fines cause bitterness through over extraction, bitterness is bad, so fines must not be produced by coffee grinders. " It will be interesting to see whether your numbers match up with your intuitions when you're doing a blind tasting of coffees brewed. While you're devising that metric, get yourself a finely calibrated set of sieves so we can home in on what fines are too fine.

You seem to be mistaking this forum for a free scientific research service. If you want to pull apart all of the chemical causes of bitterness in brewed coffee, I'd find a food chemistry PhD program and apply... you've got the makings for quite a thesis if nobody has done it before. And if buried in the stacks there is already a paper or 4 on the subject, then you've got the "substantiation" that you want. You're not going to get it here.

Why would I bother? You're unsatisfiable. Go on believing as you wish. I'm sure that you'll argue dark roasted robusta beans are no more bitter by their nature regardless of grind, with no substantiation of your own. Nothing I can do to change your mind. You need to take your certainty and find an investor or two and build the better mousetrap.

I've never noticed an "excess bitterness" problem that can be attributed to the grind. The only value in a highly precise grinder I see is getting a highly finnicky espresso machine to pull a good shot. I'd imagine that the engineering that goes into $$$ grinders is pointed toward people who spend $$$ on espresso machines. I'd imagine that some fines are there by design, as getting an espresso puck that both flows and provides the right resistance is a macro version of a geometric packing problem, and a certain % of fines is needed in the output to reach a satisfactory solution. If you really hate bitter coffee, perhaps check your beans and your roast... there's a lot more bitter flavor coming from those than from the way you grind it..

Purple shiso is ideal for pickling... the brine should go from muddy green to bright magenta as the pH lowers as the lactic bacteria do their thing... take pics of the journey!

For your setup, I might consider one of these. (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) I've got one and it is wonderful for keeping fizzy things fizzy... open a liter of tonic and make a drink. Screw on a Fizzgiz cap and squeeze the air out of the bottle, then hit the cap with the CO2 injector and repressurize the bottle and its contents... toss the bottle in the fridge and it acts like it was never opened. You've got the passage from basement to kitchen already set up, so keeping your tank in the cellar and having the carbonator in the kitchen should work. And the Fizzgiz tubing is tiny, so not a space consuming ugly thing...

Around the holidays Old Forester does, or did last year, do a timeline gift pack of the 1897, 1910, 1920 and another one... wait til xmas shopping time and look for that. It's a pack of 4x200ml, so bigger than airline sized, and for 800ml, not airline bottle priced... but a way to taste a bunch of them without having to buy a whole bottle of each...

60 PSI is middle range carbonation when the water is at cellar temperature... During the winter it gets a bit cooler down there and the bubbles get bubblier. If I wanted to guarantee a 4+ volumes kind of fizzyness, I'd need a fridge to keep the kegs in... or a paint shaker to agitate it all in there.

What I've got for the moment is 2 5 Gallon Cornelius kegs in the basement jumpered together connected to a CO2 tank with a high pressure soda regulator on it at about 60 PSI. The out line follows the icemaker line through the hole in the floor and into the kitchen and terminates in a tap I installed in the Ikea bookcase that sits next to the fridge and holds all the booze. Every couple weeks I need to go down and refill the secondary keg, which I do from the basement pressure tank which has the freshest-out-of-the-well water. I'm thinking about reconfiguring the jumpering and extending the connection from a 5 footer to something like a 20 footer so that the secondary tank can live close to the pressure tank and one of these little guys into the system so the checking and refilling goes away...

It's arrived. Now what do I do first?

Hmmm... interesting. Not something that appeals to me, but interesting no less. I know some brewers like to start with distilled water and mineral packets to replicate certain geographically typical beer style characteristics... Guess we have to wait for Deephaven to tell us what the intended meaning of custom seltzers is in this conversation.

I don't think salts at all... My water is hard enough and what's in there tastes good to me. A spritz of wintergreen into a glass makes a sugarless birch beer. A spritz of any citrus does just what you'd expect. A spritz of star anis makes a booze-free nod to pastis, etc....

Welcome! You've found the right spot! Tell me about your redneck soda stream. I've got my own 10 gallon setup plumbed into my kitchen... there are improvements that might be worth doing... Give me ideas. On the custom seltzers idea, what I've been doing is making atomizer bottles filled with a 100:1 everclear to essential oil mixtures, and using them to dose a glass of plain seltzer out the tap.

On sale? How can I resist? I'm joining the chamber vac club.

I'm with Rotuts on the DIY from green side of this... Roasting your own is the way to go if you have the ventilated space and patience to do it. The quality (and price) of green beans has skyrocketed in recent years, but even spending (shock, gasp) $80 for 10 pounds of excellent fruity ethiopian coffee beans, or even some of the newer more interesting stuff out of Colombia is a total bargain compared to subjecting myself to whatever the local coffee joints feel like selling this month for $18 per 12 oz bag of stuff they roasted to their tastes.

And @Tropicalsenior, tell us about the coffee scene in Costa Rica. I'd heard that most coffee exporting countries tend to consume Nescafe, as drinking the good stuff is like lighting money on fire...

Not a fan myself... but people I know who were regulars cited the caffeine kick as superior to other coffee joints. Maybe they char robusta beans to hide the burning tire flavor and retain the caf-kick... and some people appreciate them for it.

True... plenty of options for giving it away...

How often do steam ovens turn up at Goodwill? They're not exactly a commonplace gadget...

Since my CSO has never regained its ability to do the steam thing, I've been satisfied with its ability to just be a toaster oven. But the steam function was nice while it worked... so when I spotted this thing: Vevor steam thingy, I think I'm going to grab one and see what it is good for...

Have Lidl or Aldi made it down to ATX yet? Lidl regularly has halloumi on offer when they're doing Greek products, and Aldi occasionally has it too...

Good luck. CM is your best bet, I'd say. I bet the right person there would know all about Mexican and Central american stuff that grills like Halloumi.

Go to Central Market and ask them what grilling cheeses they have.