cdh

Found an open bag of Carafa malt and tried to treat it like espresso. Unmitigated failure resulted. The roasted barley plugged up the espresso machine when treated like coffee beans and ground as fine as they need to be ground. I ended up with a sticky compressed puck that let no water through it. So I tried again, but opened the grinder up a few clicks to make a somewhat coarser grind... still plugged up the machine. So I tried a very chunky preparation, more crushed than ground. That let water through the machine, but it wasn't anything like espresso on the other side. It seems a lot of experimentation will be necessary to figure out if there is a grind setting that will work. I'm thinking that perhaps a different device, like maybe an AeroPress, might be the thing to try to get an espresso-like extraction from dark roasted barley... will try that next.

Don't bother trying to roast your own. Find a local homebrew shop, or order from one of the online brew supply places. Plenty of selection, e.g.: http://morebeer.com/search/102158/beerwinecoffee/coffeewinebeer/Roasted_Malts Now down to the basement to see what dark grains I have handy to experiment with.

Have had it in a hippy/vegan/"healthy" eatery once... not bad but didn't strike me as different enough to be worth repeating. If you want the raw materials, pre-roasted barley is available at homebrew shops... for like $2/lb. Your question puts me in a mind to raid the brewing supplies and grind up a barley espresso to see what happens... I know I've got some chocolate malt and some black patent malt around someplace.

Brewed another round on those leaves after letting them sit on the counter for 2.5 hours. Same 2.5g, same 100ml pot, same 180-ish water temp, 90 second infusion. The resulting tea was a dead ringer for an old favorite of mine, Li Zi Xiang. Sorta green, sorta sharp and vegetal, quite astringent.

I've just started trying the Spring 2010 Jade Dragon. Brewed 2.5g in 100ml of water at about 180F in a yixing pot. First infusion of 1 minute: observations- Wow what a tropical aroma! Tropical fruit aromas abound... a little pine-apple-y, a little passion-fruity. Doesn't follow through on the palate at first... a thick rich body and some serious astringency are the first taste sensations. Mouth coastingly rich. Perhaps a little cooler water next time will tame the astringency, as the aftertaste brings back all of the tropicality, and just keeps going and going and going. Second infusion of 90 seconds: Aroma as intense as in first infusion. Infusion a bit cooler, since I did not preheat the teapot for the second infusion. Still mouth-coating and astringent up front, but with a bit of a bitterness lingering into the aftertaste, bringing some vegetal notes. The tropicality in the aftertaste is subsumed into a more vegetal thing on this infusion. More to come... must go out for the afternoon... will try a third infusion of these leaves later in the day, as I bet there's still lots of good flavor left, and it will be fun to see what an afternoon of oxidation does to them.

The goodies have arrived. Will start playing with them tomorrow.

I continue to be a fan of the green oolongs from http://www.gray-seddon-tea.com They have a great selection of the lesser oxidized oolongs, and it is a relief to see they're got their online store back in a functioning state again.

I'm working on a similar experiment right now. I have a bottle of creamsicle-flavored New Amsterdam gin that I'm trying to get some juniper flavor into. I've chucked a handful of juniper berries in there, and left it be for a few weeks. It seems to be picking up some juniper aroma, but the underlying vanilla-citrus is still there more prominently than I'd like. Need to go and pick another handful of berries off the juniper bush.

I'm with suzilightning... I need to be up and about for 3 or 4 hours before food appeals. An espresso at 8, another at 9, then a bowl of cereal around 11 in the morning is what works for me... I love omelets and breakfast sausages and scrapple and pork roll and bacon and bagels and lox and &c... just not much before noon.

Nobody has yet addressed the biggest fairness problem underlying this suggestion. We're being told that it's just not fair that all these brilliant creative geniuses behind the stick are sweating their brows off making unique libations that are getting shamelessly ripped off, and there aught to be a law... Moving copyright into this field would bring along its work-for-hire doctrine. That means that what Freeman learned and invented at WD-50 would have been owned by Wylie and his investors, any of whom could likely have stopped Freeman from leaving with Sam Mason and working at Tailor at all. And no write-up of Tailor indicates Freeman had any ownership stake in Tailor, so (unless he was an independent contractor who successfully evaded signing a work-for-hire IP agreement), he'd have no ownership interest in these drinks that we've been told are so deserving reward and protection.

FG: I think you're underestimating the chilling power of a copyright claim, and just assuming that current-day restaurant owners will permit a talented chef or bartender to leave and set up their own shop in competition. When a cause of action comes complete with presumptions in favor of injunction, statutory damages many times in excess of real provable damages, and shifts all attorneys' fees for both sides to the losing party, the mere idle mention of such a suit would make most sensible people run for the hills to avoid crossing anybody with the standing to bring such a case. I think culinary IP would result in consolidation of power in the hands of the chains and big-money owners who have the legal budget to make these sorts of threats. Would you invest in a venture that had any chance of getting slapped with one of those suits? How many intermediary structures would you create to interpose between your own assets and any liability that might result from such an investment?

OK... a quick pair of queries to the proponents of IP protection for cocktails: 1) To what extent would the work-for-hire doctrine apply to your new rule? And 2) How about protection against derivative works? Would the bartender own the recipes, or does the owner of the bar? Would you like to see a regime where a bartender can be enjoined from mixing drinks if he leaves the employ of the place he developed his style? (Anybody know if any bars make employees sign NDAs or non-competes or covenants to assign IP rights?)

Fantastic news... I'm hoping that the whole Speck/SK project exceeds our already high expectations... It's about time Shola had a restaurant to showcase what he does.

Am celebrating the cool front and its heat-wave breaking thunderstorms with some yin zhen, trying to make the synergies with chocolate come out... So far I'm getting a very nice procession of melon-y tea, which is not making glorious harmonies with either Belgian 77% chocolate, nor with Ghirardelli 72%.. The melon-y-ness is expressing itself in a manner quite reminscent of the white stuff between watermelon rind and the red watermelon... and that flavor just isn't making the chocolate sing. It is, however, masking the chocolate's own fruitiness and bringing forth the roasty toasty notes quite clearly.

I have not... yet. But then again, I very infrequently find myself consuming interesting and/or complex food preparations around tea time. Teas and wines synergize amazing well sometimes, and I'd imagine wine based sauces could take advantage of that... but in this weather, I'm not cooking like that...

Hmm... chocolate? Never would have thought it... have to try it with the last of the Yin Zhen and see if it works. I agree that these work with stone fruits... I think berries overpower them, though the aftertaste of these teas does play nicely with berry brightness.

OK... I'm trying to get closer to what you've done so far... I've got the last 2.5 g of PMD in 110ml of 175F water... letting it go 3 minutes. It comes out more bitter around the edges this way... And I now see where the melon-y flavor notes are coming from... quite cantalope-y, though in a close to the rind sort of way... Still pretty flat in its flavor profile, with a long long finish. Trying a second infusion of two minutes, which takes the bitter edge off, but doesn't provide much of interest... I think the tea is going back over the leaves for another minute... which brought out more flavor. Long steeps are what this tea was made for...

Yeah... we've been talking apples and oranges up to this point. You two have been coming at these leaves from a gong fu point of view with tiny infusions and huge leaf to water ratios, while I've been coming at it from a very western teapot angle. I need to do some 1g:1oz infusions to see how they turn out. The extremely long steeping times recommended made me skeptical of the efficacy of the gong fu method on these leaves, but you seem to be having success, so I've gotta give it a try.

I did a second infusion of the YinZhen, and after a total of 20 minutes steeping, the leaves had gotten a bit flat in flavor. Not so say the second infusion was bad, just that the fruitiness observed in the first infusion was not as evident in the second. A nice mellow flavor, but the high notes didn't go so high this time. Will give the PMD another brew and keep better track of time to see what it like closer to recommended brewing specs.

Ok... have brewed the Yin Zhen for the first time, and it is seeming a much more lively tea. 2.8 g, 10oz water at 175, 10 minutes. This is less sweet and less astringent than the Pai Mu Dan... a more rounded and fruity flavor... less flat. (Really should do the PMD for the recommended 6 minutes... that extra time infusing may be responsible for these differences.) This tea has no real bitterness as far as I can tell... a nice long finish, with a slight lingering fruity tartness on the sides of the tongue.

The weather has broken, and I've brewed up some of the Pai Mu Dan. 2.5g, 10oz water, 175F 15 minutes (lost track of time, water had dropped to 155F by the time I came back to it.) This tea is very very mellow. It has a sweet, malty aroma, with a slight papery edge. It has a mouth-coating thickness to it, and the aromatic sweetness follows through in the flavor. Then a balancing astringency kicks in and brings a hint of bitterness to the finish. There is very little complexity in the higher aromatics, very much unlike most greens and oolongs... This tea's flavor profile reminds me much more of a more delicate Assam than any of the Chinese teas that I'm familiar with.

FAR to hot here to think of hot tea... once triple digit temps abate, I'll report in.

Mine's here now too... how do we want to do this? Each on its own, or head to head?

Still haven't received... any thoughts on ETA?

Looks interesting... a good start... hope it takes off and meets with great success.