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I didn't see anybody say that. I think that is exactly what Bryan said, if not in so many words. He said that in his years of dining experience in New York's finer eateries, he's never before been refused service, and has actually had to turn away wine sales pitches. In his own words I think we've come to a consensus that drinking age laws are puritanical silliness and shouldn't be there... but they are there... and we're trying to come to terms with whether they should be obeyed for their own sake, should be ignored as the probability of anything bad occurring from breaking them is miniscule, or something in between.

A sad day indeed. You'll be missed, Mr. Chairman. But now that you're out of the public spotlight, I hope you can participate here a bit more. I'm sure that you've got a wealth of knowledge you could share with the appreciative audience here.

As a lawyer myself, I have a certain philosophical investment in the concept of the rule of law. When circumstances demonstrate that the law is not being applied equally, particularly in a manner that annoys those least empowered to demand change, I do think that a readjustment and redistribution of the annoyance caused by the law is in order. It may provide a stepping stone towards reforms that will benefit everybody. I sound like I'm taking a page from Grover Norquist and his "tax the poor so they'll hate taxation as much as the rich do" play book, and that somewhat disturbs me... but I think that booze law and tax law are different enough to justify taking that page... after all, taxation treats different people differently (and it should), whereas booze laws purport to treat everybody the same (and it should.) The more people who get annoyed at the puritanical booze laws this country has enacted, the better it will be for people who love nice things to drink. Think how much better everything would be if there were an actual free market in alcohol containing drinks. Better selection, no distribution bottleneck issues, etc. That sort of change will only happen if enough people are annoyed at the status quo, or if the status quo required some effort to maintain.

Katie- Did you leave the tea leaves in the rum for months? I'd imagine the trick to controlling the tannins lies in choosing the right tea (I'd bet a malty Assam or a very tippy Yunnan would go best with rum) and controlling how long it infuses into the booze. The timing is going to have to be tailored to the form your tea is in... if it is big whole leaves it will take longer than if it is leaf pieces or the product of CTC processing. Color would be a good indicator to rely on at first, I think. Once it gets to light golden, start tasting.

Are you trying to tell me that you read no sense of entitlement in the original recounting of the story? We must be reading in different languages if that's that case. I agree with everybody else here that the law is dumb, particularly as applied to NYC's automobile-less culture... but a law of general applicability still applies to everybody... This is just one of many really dumb laws out there... somebody really should start a third party devoted to the review and repeal of laws that are already there... too many politicians run on the "do something" platform... not enough run on the "undo something" platform.

I think this thread is bringing up a sad facet of American life today- class differences do really affect the subjective sense of applicability of the laws to various people. I think the sense of entitlement that Bryan's initial post displayed set this issue up to be a bit divisive based on one's class background or affinity. I admit that I have no problem with folk of Bryan's age enjoying a glass of wine with dinner, and I was certainly doing it myself at that age and earlier (first in England legally, and then in NYC in the laxer pre-Giuliani days). Bryan's clearly a privileged kid with remarkably good taste for somebody his age... but he's not living in the real world if he thinks that alcohol laws don't apply to him, or that establishments might not actually face consequences if they get busted serving him. While the customs and way of carrying themselves of most of the people doing the inspecting (also a class issue) might make them stick out like a sore thumb in a 3 star restaurant, that is not universal. (Hell... I'd consider a career change if booze inspector carried an expense account to dine at places like EMP and Per SE.)

Depends totally on how you stored it. If it has been on top of your fridge for 10 years, don't hold out much hope. If it has been in the basement, you're likely just fine. You want to minimize temperature changes and agitation. In theory, that 96 is capable of being delicious today and for years to come.

I see upthread you wondered why this idea doesn't appeal to me- To me, root beer is a cold thing, not a hot thing. This is like proposing a hot guacamole. Furthermore, to get it to the point of a thick sauce, you're going to have to boil it down and caramelize it a bunch, which I think will really change the flavors and drive off the aromatics. Furthermore, I see a similarity between this and molasses pudding type cakes, and never liked them very much for either their flavor or texture. Those are my thoughts...

That was a fascinating read. It makes me wonder, however, if there is the possibility to take the couverture and add some value to it in a way other than enrobing really delicious fillings with it. Might it be possible to take a bunch of couverture bars, reliquify them, and conch them for an extended period of time? Conching time is a metric by which chocolate quality is judged... If Noka were to take the Bonnat couverture, and give it an additional 48 hours of conching to smooth out the "rustic" texture the writer perceived, that could certainly add some value to the finished product... Maybe they'll have to start doing something like that now that they've been busted for being both lazy and greedy.

Cream cheese is very unlikely to kill you if it sits at room temperature for a day. Cream cheese spoilage is by growth of beasties that will change its flavor into more strong cheesiness... not anything that will make you sick. Lots of cheeses that start out a lot like cream cheese age at 50-60F for weeks as a part of their maturation process.

As Bob demonstrates, not all beers don't age well. The ones that do are the high alcohol heavily hopped varieties, which are few and far between.

South Burgundian walnut bread. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cooki...5331049.html?11 Absolutely delicious.

That's a tough sell. If it isn't coming as part of a tasting menu, even I (a root beer and birch beer lover) would be unlikely to taste it.

I think that the lemon oil is more important than the lemon juice to getting a good flavor profile. Wiki how leaves the zest out of the recipe. A shame. Your carbonation source is important too... the yeast method will carbonate a bottle... but the syrup method mixes well with seltzer, and you don't have to wait for the yeast to ferment enough sugar to carbonate it.

Peel one thumb sized piece of ginger and grind in food processor. Remove half. Add one cup sugar and 1/4tsp lemon oil and buzz in processor for a minute. Add ground stuff to one cup water and bring to a boil to dissolve the sugar. Cool, and add the other half of the ginger. Let sit in the fridge overnight. Strain. Dilute to taste with fizzy water and a squeeze of citrus. Some like a drop or two of vanilla in there. I don't. This will be cloudy looking, not pretty golden like commercial ginger ale.

That provides some comfort, FG.

Wow... that Amazon page is indeed scary. I gave one of these frying pans to a friend a couple of years ago. I hope it doesn't fail catastrophically on her. Maybe I should give her a buzz and warn her. Has anybody here on eG experienced the Amazon failure mode in these pans? I'd really like to know how widespread these explosive delaminations are.

May as well report in on the meady doings I've begun lately... I ended up making a full 5 gallons, and I like my mead dry, so I shot for about 2 pounds of honey per gallon. I used 9 pounds of Trader Joe's Desert Mesquite and a pound or so) of 1976 vintage pitch black home-made Pennsylvania countryside wild honey from my parents' stock. I find that tea tannins play well in mead, but I didn't want to heat the honey up to black tea steeping temperatures, so I decided to use green tea instead. I heated 2.5 gallons of water up to 160 and added all the honey, which dropped it down to about 145. I added some green tea leaves to one of my honey cans and filled the can with the honey water and let it steep for 3 minutes and then strained the leaves out and put the liquid back in the pot. I repeated that procedure a couple more times, as these tea leaves produce multiple good infusions. I took a bit of the must and diluted it with cold water and added some yeast slurry to wake the yeast up and get them going a bit while the bulk of the must cooled down. I decided to repeat an earlier succesful experiment and used a belgian white beer yeast to ferment the mead. After the bulk cooled down, I diluted it out to 5 gallons and added my yeast starter at 66F, and added in a teaspoon of urea and ammonium phosphate to feed the yeast. Then it went down to the basement to let the yeast do their thing.

My technique facilitates a really good black and blue... how I like steak. If you're in the market for medium rare, the char can get a bit out of control unless you dial back the heat on the grill after you flip the steak.

Might the problem come from the defrosting rather than the freezing? When I cook a frozen steak, it goes from the freezer straight onto the grill such that the outside can be well and truly Maillardized, while the inside can remain cool if I want it to. Oxidized flavor sounds like something that might come from juices exuding and pooling around the beef while it defrosts. Maybe that's why I don't experience the problem.

Excellent to see a fellow Columbian blogging about NYC. I credit Columbia with my introduction into foodieness as well... the meal plan was so poor that I got off of it in my second semester of freshman year and started shopping at UFM (RIP), Mama Joy's (RIP) and the West Side Market (RIP)... I don't know what a similarly afflicted Columbian today would do without those fine markets around in the neighborhood. /Also lived on 8th fl of Wallach sophomore year.

Blimey! A whole pound of flaked oats steeped in there? You've gotta be introducing a bunch of unfermentable starch with those oats if you're not mashing them... It sounds like you've used this recipe before... how long does it last? That oat starch seems like an invitation to a very short lifespan for this beer.

Interesting thread. One point raises questions, however: Could somebody describe this off flavor that manifests itself in frozen beef? I can't say that I've ever been put off by frozen beef, and find it often quite delicious and not readily differentiable from unfrozen. What should I aim to taste for if I wanted to single out this defect?

Welcome Malkavian! Please chime in with anything that is on your mind. I've done my teaching now... folks are not students anymore, we're all just fellow brewers now. Anybody who has made it this far through the thread and brewed along knows brewing technique... I've not done a lot of brewing recently, finding myself with 3 kegs of beer, a keg of pear cider and a fermentor full of mead slowly churning its way along... I do have a smack pack of Wyeast Roeselare sitting around that will also occupy a fermentor for 4-6 months... so I'm holding off on adding anything else to the collection right now.

I have to add another thumbs up for the Grandma Utz... Tasty good stuff. Good that we Pennsylvanians, with our absurd blessing of crispy potato options, are taking notice and appreciating what we've got.