cdh

Have found the comprehensive Pennsylvania list -- sometimes the crazy liquor laws have their benefits-- you'll find it here: Pennsylvania Bulletin beer listings It appears to be a remarkably useful list (provided the information in it is accurate). I am, however, too lazy at the moment to do the cross-reference work to find which of the Alsatian breweries' beers are imported and by who. A little clerical drudgework will likely refine the list of possible beers to a small list.

No ideas come to mind... however here is a pointer to a list of Alsatian breweries: Click... I only have run across the Fischer beers and the Kronenbourg... neither anything like the deliciously off-the-wall beers I associate with Belgium. If they're looking for a lager like a Belgian lager, e.g. a Stella Artois clone, maybe something Kronenbourg brews might fit the bill... but I can't imagine that is what they're asking for. Given a little time to research, I should be able to figure out which breweries export to the US, given the importer registration requirements... at least I know the web provides a list of every variety of beer that has been sold in Pennsylvania... ATF must have such a list for all imported beers, no? It would be great if those amongst us who have tasted products of the other Alsatian breweries could comment on what they're like... I always think wine when I think Alsace... and they do it very well... is the same true for the artisanal beers of the region?

Since Kummel is a germanic beverage, and NYC is a city of neighborhoods, you might want to try a german neighborhood for a liquor store that carries it-. Yorktown is the only germanic 'hood in Manhattan I can think of, and it has been overrun by UES yuppies, so I don;t know if it would be your destination or not. I'd look up Mr Wright's Liquors at about 90th and 3rd (or is it 2nd... so long since I've been up there) and ask if they've got it. A worthwhile boozery if it's still around.

No NO NO! Not floats--- Porter Milkshakes! That is the tasty beer dessert. Bust out the blender and a bottle of anchor porter and some quality vanilla ice cream.

How long have they been making this Pimm's-y stuff, and has is been exported to US yet? I'm a Pimms addict during the summer, and I find Pimm's to be one of the best party drinks to serve (when made up in a vast bowl). Here's my Pimm's recipe for a party sized bowl: 1 cup pimms 1 cup vodka 1 cucumber peeled and sliced into round 1 orange sliced into rounds 2 L ginger ale Generally I find that one huge chunk of ice is better than cubes, so I've taken to filling a fancy copper bunt pan with water and freezing, and putting the big donut-shaped .

Indeed you know some of those Pennsylvania patio patois... Still have to give credit (or blame) to James Carville for summing up the political map of Pennsylvania-- the eastern sliver is firmly a part of the northeast, the west ern sliver is firmly part of the midwest, and in between you find yourself in Alabama.

Hey! Watch it. The midwest doesn't start until Pittsburgh... after you pass through the Deep South's northern annex, a/k/a/ Pennsylbama (or Pennsyltucky in some local patios)...

Glad to see sherry getting some of the attention it deserves. I've been making a tour of the various varieties that briefly became available to me when Pennsylvania's state liquor monopoly deigned to expand the sherry selection... They had a range of Antonio Barbadillo sherries, and I tried the Manzanilla, the Oloroso, the Amontillado, and a far too sweet one that wasn't cream sherry... something like a Muscatel or such. All were tasty, and I went back for second bottles of the Oloroso and the Amontillado, which struck me as decent bargains at about $8 a bottle. The Powers That Be have deigned to prune that branch of the inventory, however, so I'm left with nothing but the Tio Pepe, Dry Sack, and a selection of cream sherries that don't really appeal. My father is a fan of Harvey's Shooting Sherry, which is a medium sweet oxidised sherry that is actually kind of nice. Since sherry is often a rare find, how about pooling the eGullet wisdom and experience on all the producers we can, so that if we run across something unfamiliar, we'll have the foreknowledge of what other people with good taste think about it. So, besides the Lustau and the Hidalgo (never seen either in PA's state liquor barn system), lets name some producers and elicit some reactions. Savory & James- This is available in PA liquor stores, but looks cheap (and is)... is this a diamond in the rough, or a waste of $7? What varieties do they do?? Cream is what's usually there, though I vaguely remember seeing others as well once. Osborne- Have seen several varieties of this come and go, but haven't picked any up. Harvey's- What else do they do besides Bristol Cream and Shooting Sherry? Any of them worth pickinh up? Who else is out there making sherry?

The humidity and general meteorological unpleasantness of late had inspired a need for something chilly and refreshing... I was looking for the York peppermint patty effect, and where else to turn but creme de menthe. Inspired by thoughts of mint juleps, I took Bourbon as the base and poured two ounces over the ice in my shaker. Then topped that with a half ounce of clear creme de menthe and and a half ounce of creme de cacao... shook til it my metal shaker was too cold to hold, poured into a cocktail glass, and topped with three shakes of Fee's mint bitters. It worked. Yum. We all know that chocolate and mint work very well... we know that bourbon and mint work well... and we know that bourbon and chocolate work well. We now know that all three together work really well. The Cool Refreshing Breeze 2 oz Bourbon .5 oz uncolored creme de menthe .5 oz uncolored creme de cacao 3 dashes Fees Mint bitters Combine the first three in a sharker with ice. Shake. Strain into glass. Top with bitters.

After simmering my beef-bone-based stock all night, this morning's pouring off and straining produced an interesting effect I'd like to share-- I poured the 10 (or so) quarts of stock (overnight evaporation took its toll) from the 20 Qt stockpot into a smaller stockpot after fishing out all the bones and veg and such with a slotted spoon. In a desire to strain better than my collander could do by itself, I lined it with a wet paper towel (run of the mill Bounty). As I poured the stock into the collander and through the towel, it seemed that a disproportionate amount of the fat was remaining in the collander and not pouring through with the stock. As the process continued, it was becoming obvious that a very high percentage of the fat was refusing to pass through the paper towel, while the water-based stock sailed right through. So, after getting it all out of its cooking vessel and into a suitable recepticle, I picked up the towel full of fat and deposited easily a pint of fat into other pot I was using to hold the bones and veg... I repeated the trick with fresh towels a couple of times, and not only cooled the stock significantly by the pouring action, but also lots more fat refused to pass the towels again. I'm expecting to come home tonight to find little if any fat on top of the stock in the fridge. A neat effect, and easily understandable given fat's dislike of water and propensity to float above it... Anybody else use this method for de-fatting a hot stock? I was thinking that if I didn't have to go to work I could have passed it through a couple more times, and set it to reducing then and there...

With a roasted-bone meat stock, is the bone-washing procedure recommended, or are you stuck with lots of skimming? I just picked up some beef marrow bones and roasted them (my supermarket wanted $5.79/lb for veal shanks... frozen, even... the $1.29/lb marrow bones seemed the way to go.) I've got them covered w/ H2O in the pot, but no veg... am going to observe and see how voluminous the scum becomes, and chuck in the veg after the majority subsides, I think.

I've got a query about stock storage based on the way I've done it in the past. I've made stocks of the variety described in the previous lessons, usually with roasted duck carcasses. Once I've got the pot full of stock, and skimmed most of the fat off, rather than cooling it down immediately in the fridge, I just boil it down to almost nothing... a full 8 quart stock pot of stock generally gets down to about 2 ramekins worth of reduction... which ramekins are then topped up with a layer of fat and stored in the fridge. This has worked for me in the past, as it is a space saver and yields a wonderfully concentrated product. I've restored this stuff to usual strength to make a broth for risotto purposes and it has worked there, and a half spoonful in with some sauteeing veggies is a wonderful thing. What I don't know about is the textural issue with regard to sauces... will reconstituted stuff give the same mouthfeel as the pre-reduction stuff? Or is there a chemical point of no return on the path to glace?

How did this idealized picture of how Americans ate come into your mind? Again, personal experience (granted, from the agrarian perspective of my forbearers) didn't look at all like that. Breakfast was cereal followed by eggs and occasionally some fried meat, maybe toast. Fruit or other makings of a "square" meal didn't play that early in the morning. The next meal was "dinner", which was a large meal with lots of meat, veg, starch, etc, followed by a small late evening "supper", which was often a sandwich or such and a bowl of fruit sliced up and sprinkled with sugar. If you can get me some reliable data that proves my anecdotal evidence about my farming ancestors is firmly outside the mainstream, and that most of America did, indeed, eat 3 squares a day at some point in the Halcyon Days of Yore, I'll gladly concede... 'til then, I'm still unconvinced of your position that there was a time, Back In The Day, when everybody ate more good-for-you-stuff and less bad-for-you-stuff. The identity of the bad-for-you-stuff is a moving target over the years, but the bull's eye is firmly planted on processed foods right now, but that's immaterial... there has always been lots of bad-for-you-stuff out there, and people have always enjoyed eating it. High-fat and concentrated calories are, after all, evolutionarily favored foods... back when there were lean times those who ate bad-for-you-stuff survived and those who didn't starved. Now, moving on to the assertion that preparation is immaterial to nutrition, and the old fashion of cooking the hell out of everything was fine, so long as the everything that got the hell cooked out of it was good-for-you-stuff, I don't believe a word of it. Vitamins are soluble. Boil anything with them in for a while, and they find their way into the water... which goes down the drain.

When you say that, do you mean that the water (the ~15% of the butter that's not fat) is important in making a roux? One should not wait for the butter to foam and water to evaporate out? I've gotten into the habit of always waiting for the fat to get above 212F as a means of ensuring that it is just fat that I'm dealing with. If one's butter does faom before adding the flour, should one add a splash of water to make up for the evaporation?

I must say that your choice of phrase is somewhat misleading... "traditional American diet". Maybe foodies won't disparage that... but traditional American preparation of the foods that compose that diet? I think lots of foodies will take issue with that. Recognizing that there are a zillion American traditions, I'll pull examples from my own family's traditional cookery on the family farm in Princeton, NJ. The beautiful fresh vegetables are traditionally cooked until floppy and lifeless. Beef (also farm raised), both roasts and burgers, are cooked past well-done and into the crumbly stage. "Mayonaise", when homemade, contained neither eggs nor oil, but was a vinegar and flour and corn starch and god knows what else preparation. You've not spent much time eating the home cooking of nonagenarians who've been taught traditional American cooking in their youth if you believe that foodies wouldn't disparage some of it. Certainly some of it is great... mmmm clam pie... but lots of traditional american preparations are anathema to today's foodie. For a much better treatment of the awful nature of traditional american cookery, see M. F. K. Fisher's With Bold Knife and Fork, particularly the bits about her grandmother's dietary predelictions. No Halcyon Days of Yore in the Great American Gastronomic Past, I'm afraid.

Bacon Bacon sizzling bright In the frypans of the night What immortal bun or toast could frame thy luscious crunchiness

Haven't tried any of them. All sound far too engineered and marketed for my tastes. If anybody is going to engineer my cocktail, it is going to be me.

The GC rocks as a bar reference! Its copyright was 1939, so it could have been protected for 48 years at the maximum, right? I'd have to check a reference I don't have handy, but I'd bet it is public domain. As to bitters, the classics are the Angostura, Peychaud and orange bitters... Angostura has a sort of "cookie spice" flavor, while the Peychaud has a brighter and more licorice-like flavor. Orange bitters is nice, but is less complex than either of the others... they're also much less available. Amongst the other less available bitters, there are Fee's Aromatic bitters, which is closest to Angostura, but has more pronounced cinnamon and clove highlights. Fees also do a Peach bitters, and a Mint bitters... the Peach makes a lovely champagne cocktail, and pairs with fruit juice based drinks quite well... it gets lost in straight booze. The Mint requires more experimentation... it's green color makes for some unnatural colors, which has discouraged me from playing with it. From foreign shores, you might find bitters like Boonekamp, which comes in very large bottle (750 ml)... but is as strong as an ordinary bitter. Boonekamp is dark, unsweetened, and has clove and licorice flavors predominating with a bunch of others flavors in the background. You could also find the little tiny single-serving bottles of Underberg, which is roundly herby, and quite pleasant straight. There is the Czech Becherovka bitters, which is sweet and has a cinnamon and spicy nature, and makes for a very nice change in a manhattan instead of Angostura. Those are the lot I've had experience with... I've omitted Campari since everybody knows that one and its citrus-peely-ness... I've been meaning to try Gammel Dansk, but haven't gotten around to it. Don't know of any other commerially available cocktail bitters, so would appreciate enlightmenment if anybody else knows any.

An old favorite that has become a classic amongst my friends that was christened the Homeskillet many years ago: 2 oz Rye (or bourbon if you're looking for something sweeter) .5 oz red vermouth (anything but Martini and Rossi... echhhhh) .25 oz Luxardo maraschino 2 dashes Angostrura Shake over ice until really chilly. Serve up. And a very recent invention as yet without a name: 1.5 oz bourbon over ice in an old fashioned glass 2 dashes Fees' peach bitters top with Trader Joe's Apricot-Peach juice. yummy.

Not a copyright at all... this is pure trademark law, with a little bit of brand dilution theory thrown in. The whole point of trademark law is to protect consumers from being misled by products attempting to pass themselves off as something else. The problem in this case comes from the usage of some of the words in issue... i.e. the English language does not have more than one word that conveys the idea of "Feta cheese". Give it a try... come up with an alternate term that is less than a full sentence long to convey the idea of Feta cheese. Champagne has dodged that bullet because "sparkling wine" is a perfectly usable alternate term that does not mislead consumers into thinking that they they're getting something from that particular region of France when, in fact, they're not. This has actually been dealt with in international trademark treaties, and if I felt like digging around in my attic for my book of trademark treaties and laws, I could quote sections of them to you that deal with this very topic...

While we're chatting about the funkier herbally infused wines, I must put in a brief plug for Byrrh... which is a port-like fortified wine that has been dosed with quinine and an herb or two. Very nice. I'll also note my previously expressed observation that Noilly Prat white plus a few drops of Orange Bitters is a pretty damn good flavor clone to the Lillet Blanc, albeit minus the caramel undertones of the Lillet. And I'll say that I've never been impressed with Punt e Mes... doesn't do much for me, I don't find. Further, I'll have to track down the Vya... but I'm still reticent about paying $24 for a bottle of vermouth... and I can't think of a bar that might serve it... even in NYC... and even if one did, I'm sure a drink would cost half the price of the bottle.

Sad to hear it is only a ghost... maybe they'll pump some life into it yet... but not likely. I guess I'm stuck homebrewing.

Huh? What's he talking about?

While this is sure to raise the hackels of any true believers out there, I must say that the absolute worst beer I've ever tasted was Orval. I've tried (and liked) all of the other Belgian Trappists, but Orval has crossed the line, as far as I'm concerned. It is too bitter, and too funky. Ick. I'll go back to my Goudenband and Rodenbach and leave that stuff to the crazy nuts who enjoy it.

No idea what makes it so, but today I did see a Canada Dry cherry wishniak soda... first time ever I've seen it. Must pick one up and give it a try. Anybody know if Frank's is still in business? Their cherry wishniak was really good, and I've not seen it around in a long time.