cdh

I wonder if the Cognac rules apply to other brandies too. If the Riedel glasses' new and different aerodynamics get more vapor to your nose with less surface are exposed and at lower temperatures, then they should work for any brandy, not just Cognac.

As a follow up to my musings above, I just made a bloody mary-like beverage out of the corn liquor... had to dig around in the box of party leftovers that I'd figured wouldn't get touched until the next big bash... Anyway, it does sort of work in that context. The very grainy undertones work well with V8 and worcestershire and my bloody mary oil. Doesn't taste like a bloody mary (that could be the for lack of horseradish in my house), but it is not at all disgusting even without horseradish. If you find yourself with a mason jar of the stuff, don't lose all hope.

Like it a lot. Generally prefer it to Cognac, actually. Distilled with a different type of still than they use in Cognac.

Hmmm.... are the tall tulip glasses really an old-fashioned Cognac tradition, or are they the fruits of the Riedels' engineering and marketing? Riedel makes all sorts of interestingly shaped glasses for specific stuff... does anybody else make Cognac glasses of the same shape? Or has Riedel gotten itself a 100% market share of die-hard cognac consumers? Interesting... I'll have to try my next Cognac from a tall glass at room temperature and see if it tastes any better. Silly me thinking that the same rules applied to brandy and Cognac... being the same thing and all...

Cognac is a type of brandy. It's nothing at all like wine, except for the fact that it is made from wine. As to how to taste it, you want it served warm. Body temperature or a little above. The huge-bowled glasses they serve it in are designed so that you can cup the bottom in your palm and transfer body heat into the contents of the glass. A wide bodied glass with a narrow opening at the top is the best glassware option. Wider is better, as you expose more surface area, and get more vapors evaporating from your drink, which is a good thing. As a spirit, a whole lot of the process of "tasting" Cognac actually goes on in your nose and sinuses. Before you put your lips to the glass you want to inhale deeply and get a noseful of the vapors coming from your drink. You also want to make sure that you exhale slightly through your nose just after you've taken a sip... that will move the vapors in your mouth up into your olfactory system and more of the flavor experience will hit you. Cognac is quite variable from brand to brand and from one level of quality to the next... it is also a heavily hyped luxury product... You'll have to taste a bunch of them to find one you particularly like more than the rest, and people's tastes really do vary. As to the confusing jabber of letters on the bottles: VS= youngest and roughest VSOP= somewhat less young and rough XO= Mellow and expensive

Its not an either/or kind of situation... A bucket w/ airlock has slightly more air exposure than a carboy with an airlock. A carboy without an airlock is still pretty damn closed, given its narrow neck and the propensity of CO2 to form a blanket over the beer unless disturbed by air currents... the propensity to diffuse into equilibrium with the air would be inhibited by the narrow neck too. Considering the advice I've been given on the Ringwood yeast, I intend to go a step closer to fully open than my usual bucket w/ airlock, and just do a bucket with a dishtowel rubber banded around the top. The towel will keep most airborne beasties away, and there will still be decent access to oxygen since the diffusion won't be affected too much by the towel.

Will do. Have yet to hear from my guys... I should have controlled my wacky yeast compulsion and taken something they had in stock... but I just couldn't brew with Whitbread yeast... Will take lots of pictures once I'm able to brew.

I'll second the suggestion of Angel's Share. Japanese precision applied to the fine art of mixology. Their menu is all classics, so don't go there looking for a particular house specialty cocktail. Go there for the best examples you'll find of the old classics. Don't go with more than three friends, as they won't allow groups larger than four. No dress code. There is a particular eGullet cocktail concocted for us by master mixologist Dale DeGroff... I believe the Beacon is the venue that serves it... but do a search for the "Flaming Orange Gully" thread for the correct details. There are nice, but very pricey, drinks to be had at the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis, but then again, they're classicists... and expensive... the number 18 comes to mind for the last Manhattan I drank there, but I don't recall if that was before or after tip. No formal dress code. On the general topic of making pilgrimmages to bars well known for their cocktails, I wonder if anywhere that has gotten itself famous enough to be "well known" still bothers to make good drinks... or if the drinks that made them famous are any good. I went out of my way to stop in at the Raffles in Singapore for a Singapore Sling, despite the warnings of a Singaporean epicure friend of mine... and he was right... not a great drink. Let us know more of what you had in mind? Are you looking for modern creative mixology, or masters of the classics?

Well, the Wyeast shipment didn't arrive at my brew shop yet... they say it will probably appear on Monday, so I'll brew during the week. Best of luck to those infusing grains and boiling hops as I type. Post any questions, and I'll do my best to answer them.

And that's a bad thing? Too much of a bite to drink straight, too corny to mix with juice. Tomato juice seems its only hope. Imagine unsalted Fritos... dipped in jam... that wrong. Needs salt.

Was brought to a party I attended as a joke. Tastes like alcoholic Fritos. Might be nice in savory drinks like bloody maries, but not good either straight or with fruit.

indeed. dry vermouth + orange bitters does approximate blonde Lillet... but without the caramelized notes in the Lillet. I do use orange bitters in martinis (when I infrequently make them), but don't use either of your gins.

Here you are: http://www.keystonehomebrew.com/beerkits/nutbrown.cfm

My brew shop told me that my yeast would be coming in tomorrow, so I'm hoping their prediction was right. We'll see if I can actually brew on saturday or not. Yeast should at least be really fresh in the smack pack...

Independently of the source of 15% (or 25%) of the grapes, yes. Here's a summary of the AVA law for those interested.

Please don't.

I was more thinking of running into somebody in a wine shop while shopping for champagne and being on the receiving end of a rant about how evil Korbel or other such are. If shrill browbeaters are called into service in the cause, then the cause is already lost. Re your beer crack... maybe I would rather a case of Rochefort 10 or Westvleteren 12 rather than a bottle of Cristal sometimes. If Champagne gets shrill and annoying, then I might just act on that impulse. You see, I'm something of a contrarian by nature-- I'm inclined to question and pick apart any command given to me, and if it is unfounded, then to ignore it. If the Champegnoise are going to step out from behind their mystique and start issuing commands, then my questioning analytical nature will be engaged. Champagne: You must only celebrate with real Champagne from Champagne! (preferably LVMH or Domecq owned products, since they're probably paying for this) Me: Oh yeah? why? Maybe I'd like to celebrate with a Burgundy or maybe a Riesling... or that lovely Gewurz that smells like roses... Champagne: No! You have always celebrated with fizzy wine, and it must be our fizzy wine. Me: Now why did I always gravitate toward fizzy wines in celebratory situations? Hmmm... thoughtless reflex, I guess... and it goes so well with the caviar. No caviar today, so I don't need to limit myself to champagne. Now what will go well with those lamb chops...

The building of a reputation is a product of investments in quality and communication, not a byproduct of regulation. A designator of origin does not create value per se. Such investments in reputation deserve to be protected exactly like investments in patents or trademarks. And if you grant protection in a specific country (based on the concept of AVAs for example), why should one refuse to grant this protection for foreign AVAs? And every house in Champagne that invests in quality and communication has a name... in fact it is their Trademark. It is protected. If I were to start a winiery and start making fizzy wine and called it Bollinger, I'd be counterfeiting their trademark. The law already covers this on the producer level. Why does it need to expand to cover the regional level too? Lots of people seem to be harping on the AVA idea... hate to burst your bubble, but nobody pays attention to them in the US market. There are plenty of non AVA wines that are of quality camparable to AVA wines. People I know do not operate on the assumption that the AVA is an elite club that winemakers strive to get into, and that membership in the AVA is a guarantee of a highest quality product. Scott- to put it in as simple terms as possible (blind idiot that I am): "Everybody else is doing it" is not a reason to do something. Just because the EU has decided to humor France's demands that wine law everywhere within the union look like french law is no reason for the rest of the world to do so. Bandwagonism is both poor rhetoric and poor logic... but maybe only in this blind idiot's view.

Well, I will gladly set aside reasoning (legal or otherwise) and continue the argument purely ad hominem, if the audience so desires. Though, Mr. Duke, as your attorney, I'd strongly advise that you open my briefcase and drink the three magnums of champagne and then...

My thinking is that champagne's cachet is a subconscious reaction... it is not reasoned, and is more akin to a cultural reflex action. If they succeed in getting most people to analyze what is champagne, people might just keep on thinking and realize that they don't like it much... even if what they don't like is the cheap fizzy wine not from France (though I'm not much of a fan of the NV bottlings of a lot of the French houses too.) When a reflex action comes under self-conscious scrutiny, it is liable to be judged and possibly rethought, whereas if it remained a simple reflex, then it is safe from such scrutiny. As a personal example, think about the sounds of certain words... they begin to sound sort of absurd when I think about them... but when I need to convey a message, I reflexively use them without thought about the absurdity of their sound. By pushing a whole national market to think hard about fizzy wine, they're taking the chance of undoing the magic of the reflex action they're benefitting from.

I had a stellar meal at Tratoria La Caterina on Pack Place in downtown Asheville... creative and well executed food. Roasted wedge of kure squash stuffed with duck confit and chunks of ricotta salata, drizzled with mint infused oil and roasted seeds of some variety made a great appetizer. The braised veal cheeks entree was similarly excellent.

Now that I think a little more about it, I'm close to convicing myself that if the Champagne growers actually do vociferously pursue this particular fight, they may be doing themselves more harm than good. In the popular mentality, the celebratory, sexy, fun drink is champagne. For a lot of people, even those who don't like it very much, fizzy wine is what gets busted out when they want to mark a milestone. If champagne becomes associated with histrionic brow-beating of the sort evidenced here recently, they'll soon find their reputation for light-hearted fun going down the tubes, and people might decide to mark their milestones with other beverages or activities that seem more fun to them. Just a thought... what say you all?

Yes. I plead guilty to one of your current accusations against me, though not one of the ad hominems (I am a reasonably pleasant guy and quality human being when my sense of legal overreaching is not riled). I am, indeed, as you accuse, morally blind in this situation. My moral sense does not extend to the realm of victimless crimes, so I believe that laws reaching into that sphere are misguided. Demonstrate to me any actual harm that arises from the current state of affairs, and I may change my mind. My perception of the situation looks like this- There is a market segment of sophisticates who know where Champagne is from. They're sufficiently sophisticated, also, to know that a bottle of Korbel is not what they're looking for in the champagne section of their wine shop. Growers in Champagne lose no sales because these people are tricked into buying the wrong product. No lost sales == no harm. There is also a market segment of unsophisticated people who aren't willing to pay the (increasingly exorbitant) prices that the growers in Champagne are asking, and still want fizzy wine with corks that go "pop!" for the celebratory events in their lives. They will buy by price, and will seldom front the cash demanded of them by the growers in Champagne. Whether the $10 bottle they buy says Champagne on it or not, the growers in Champagne are not losing a sale, since they cannot compete within the price range that this market segment is willing to spend. No lost sales == no harm. Before accusations of further moral blindness are pointed at me, I'll also admit up front that I also have trouble with the concept of intangible damage to reputation through association with tarnishingly inferior products... so if that is all you're up in arms about, we'll have to agree to disagree. I concede that such a position has recently been deemed reasonable by the U.S. Congress insofar as they've codified a law on dilution of famous brands... but were I in congress I'd not have voted for it.

OK. I'm mad at them. And at myself for not noticing that in the story. But do we trust the reporter to get that detail right anyway? It is USA Today, after all.

FG- Same machine, new grinder? What were you grinding with back in the early days of unsatiisfactory espresso? What are you grinding with now? Getting the grind right is really the key. I find that different beans need different settings, and also that the relative humidity and the season require adjustments in the grinder settings.