cdh

PET is the type of plastic that carbonated beverage bottles universally used in the U.S. and Western Europe are made from. In every part of the world I'm familiar with, mass market seltzer comes in plastic bottles and nothing else. I figured that would be clear. Even in Manhattan, I don't think there are still glass seltzer bottles readily available. As to the schrapnel thing... yep, it is a possibility with glass bottles. Glass is some temperamental and finicky stuff. It shatters when its temperature moves more than it likes... some knocks can weaken it and make it surprisingly vulnerable, while others do nothing... If there's too much sugar in your beer when you bottle it, the yeast can make so much carbon dioxide in there that the glass can't take it and it blows up. PET bottles have the fantastically modern improvement of twist-on resealable caps. Even if your beer gets too fizzy and one goes boom, you can twist the cap and release the excess in the rest... then clean up the container in which the bottle popped. PET is good for short term beer storage, but it has gas permeability issues... sodas don't last much more than a year in a bottle and maintain full carbonation. So, if you're trying to brew something that will age for years like a wine, or a mead or some very strong or unusual beers, then PET isn't the way to go. Gas permeability goes two ways... fizz goes out, and oxygen gets in. Neither is optimal. But if you're starting out, making a small batch, and not planning on keeping it around for years, PET is the way to go. Just watch out for bottles that have had soda in, as some of the flavoring compounds can latch onto the plastic and keep on giving. You don't want that... so the recommendation is PET seltzer bottles. Plain seltzer only.

1. For the boil, yes. As a fermentation vessel? I'd recommend against it. Aluminum is somewhat reactive, especially to acids that may be produced by yeast. 2. Doesn't matter. If you use whole hops, they do absorb more liquid than pellets do, so you'll want to add excess water to the beginning of the boil to compensate not just for evaporation, but also for hops rehydration too. 3. Your shop carries the Fermentis products, so I'd recommend the S-04 or the US-56.

Yes, that's easy. It is impossible to copy a unique dish, otherwise it wouldn't be unique. Where does the protection kick in? How similar is too similar? How far would you have the derivative works protection extend?

OK. Where is the line between protectable culinary expression and process, procedure and concept? Any judge who you ask to create this nasty piece of precedent will ask you that... I'd like to hear it too.

As I said above, if you're going to insist on precise calculations, you're welcome to explain the math. And, while you're at it, do please delve into the differences in calculating %booze by weight and by volume. My position stands that looking at the last two digits in an original gravity reading will give a rank newcomer a ballpark figure about where the beer will come in. Nobody should be surprised that a beer that starts at 1.060 comes in at 6.3% and is not a fine session beer. That is what my rule is designed for. If the difference between a 5.8% and a 6.2% beer is very important to you, then there is math you can do that will tell you what you've got.

Read on to the bottom of the section where it says Making a dish is certainly a process, arguably a procedure, and it might be a concept.

Copyright can and should be ignored in this context for the simple reason that the statute enumerates the forms protectable expression can take, and food is not included amongst them*. Calling a dish a sculptural creation is about as close as you can get, and that would only protect its visual appearance, and not its constituent parts. Extending copyright to a culinary dish would require congressional action. * See here for the list.

I agree that Wyeast is great. Their products are all top notch. They have a great variety to choose from. I don't agree that all dry yeasts are inferior to the liquid yeast alternatives, however. The new Fermentis and Danstar products that I've tried have done quite well in comparison to the Wyeast that I've been using in terms of speed. But for a beginner, the liquid yeast are more perishable, the smack pack dynamics are likely to be confusing or at least a source of uncertainty, and the process of making a starter is too involved. Given that we're only brewing in beginner-sized two-gallon batches, nobody should need to handle their yeast in any way other than ripping the package open and sprinkling it over the wort. I've tried both rehydrating and just pitching the dry yeast dry, and there is not a difference in performance worth noting in a little batch. I've successfully pitched a 10g S-33 into a 5 gallon batch and it took off in less than 8 hours. That is fine performance in my book. So, for advanced brewers the Wyeast is a great product and totally worth looking into. For a beginner, the dry alternatives are more than just good enough... they're now quite good.

Yeast can make a huge impact on the flavor of your beer, so your choice of yeast will eventually be up to your personal taste. One packet of any dry yeast on the market will be enough eat all the sugar in a 2 gallon batch. I've not tried every dry yeast on the market, so I can't speak to all of their qualities individually. I've recently made tasty beers with Danstar Nottingham, which let the hop and malt characteristics come through quite well in a British bitter style beer. Danstar's Windsor adds a bit of estery fruitiness in the same beer. Safale S-33 was pleasant in a light brown ale. If you've never brewed before, you should experiment your way through the selections that are available to you and decide on what you like. Many American brewers strive to eliminate yeast's influence on the flavor of the beer, fermenting at low temperatures and choosing the most neutral strains of yeast available. The favorite dry yeast for that goal is Safale's US-56. Belgian beers are prominently flavored by yeast that impart lots of flavor, and a dry version of that is the Safbrew T-58. Some love it, some hate it, you'll have to try it eventually. So, pick something, make note of what it is, and decide whether you liked it or not so you know when you go shopping for yeast the next time.

Is it within one percent or not? It all depends on what you call close. If you're going to do the math here, you're welcome to explain it to beginning brewers as well. I find that throwing formulae all over the place scares off most beginners. I recommend bottling in plastic bottles too, so the danger of exploding glass should be out of the picture here. If you're going to bottle in glass, the best practice is to take hydrometer readings on consecutive days, and only bottle once the readings stay the same over 2 or 3 days. I've already admitted that I don't do that, but I also tend to let my beers ferment for 2 full weeks (which is also what I recommend here), which gets past most stuck fermentation issues that might cause dangerous glass grenades.

Dry malt extract will be fine for months to years if kept sealed in a cool, low humidity environment. Hops in all forms keep best when frozen. Dry yeast keeps best in the fridge, as does liquid yeast. Dry yeast keeps longer in the fridge.

About the flip-top bottles: they're great. I have a bunch and use them all the time. They're also expensive and tough to find sometimes. If you're sure that you're into brewing, then they're a worthwhile investment... but I prefer to buy them filled with beer, as they seem like such a bad deal at $1.50 each empty, when you can get then for $2.00 each filled with nice German beer. The PET seltzer bottles are recommended in this elementary course for both convenience and safety. All things glass can shatter and hurt you. I won't recommend using the glass carboys that are traditional brewing equipment because I have heard of far too many people who ended up in the hospital when a large beer-filled glass container didn't like a bump, or a temperature change and blew up sending razor-edged schrapnel all over the place. The liter PET bottles are by no means too big. One liter is easily consumed in a time frame during which it will hold onto its carbonation. The safest, cheapest and easist route is to go with the liter PET bottles.

Fire away if anything needs to be made clearer...

I'll stop in there in the next week or so and report back.

Ummm... you're attributing to me a position I have never taken.. where does this idea that nonfiction is special come from?

protecting or stifling? and allowing the bony grasp of a corpse dead 70 years to exercise control from the grave? Some protection for the creative is certainly warranted, but what we've got is nuts if you're on the outside looking in. If you've built business models based on what we've got, it might look really good to you.

Wow! Perfect timing with the eGCI brewing course getting started real soon. I've designed that course to be geared to the absolute beginners amongst us, so it will be fun to see the journal of an old hand at it progressing in about the same time frame. And your pictures will be interesting... I've found myself unable to take pictures of the brewing process that have as much information content as the text that would have filled that space does. It doesn't seem a photogenic process to me.

Do you mean to say that you think that culinary dishes (and all derivatives therefrom) should be the property of their creator and his heirs for his lifetime plus 70 years? Or (more likely) of the company that employed the creator, for 95 years? That is the regime under which fine aural and visual arts are protected today. It's quite crazy, but it is what we've voted for ourselves through our fine elected representatives, so we have to live with it.

This is something I've wondered about before... what we get as lemons and limes are the product of lots of modern botanical science aimed at getting pretty transportable fruits... I doubt what the authors of the classics had to use much resembled what we get today. I wonder if there are any records that could shed some light on the flavor profile of old-timey lemons and limes. Were they as acidic... was there more or less essential oil in the zest, etc. Anybody have access to a food chemistry archive with analysis of pH of juices, or efficiency of oil pressings? That would be a good place to start.

These drinks had lime juice in them? If so it may be differences in the kinds of limes that are available. Lime juice can sometimes be quite bitter.

That brings to mind that years ago I was enlisted to help create some Ellsworth Kelly inspired artwork to fit in a friend's very modernist apartment. Even though Kelly's art was very simple- fields of color juxtaposed a la Rothko, circles of one color imposed on another, etc... the real thing always looked much better than anything we could hack together. It was an amusing adventure in failing to succeed at something apparently quite simple. A really well executed simple dish is often as delicious (or more so) than the most complicated. The skill that makes a simple dish delicious is the same one that makes a complicated project interesting to eat. If somebody is lacking that skill, it won't matter what their food looks like... it won't taste right. If it does taste right, then good for them, they've added one more delicious thing to the world.

Is this the Famous Original Ray's exception? Nobody cares that Manhattan is full of Famous Original Ray's, Original Famous Ray's, Ray's Original Famous, etc... (without anybody seeming to know if there was in fact at any time a One True Ray's)... A slice joint is a slice joint, and marketing is marketing? But when the technical skill increases, the obligation to respect one's betters comes into play? My lese majeste theory from a couple of pages back seems to be the principle at work here.

Royalties don't belong in this picture. What the general clamor here appears to be for is something like worldwide moral rights over particular food preparations. I think that idea is a bit silly in the context of food... but then again, I also think the idea is silly in the context of music and paintings too. Just because I find them silly hasn't prevented most of continental europe (and the U.S. to a limited extent) from adopting laws that give owners of copyrighted works inalienable rights to control their works long after they've been sold. Feel free to discuss that model if it jives with what you think is right. When it comes to food, whether what's sitting on my plate is an original creation or a knock-off counts for a tiny fraction in my assessment of it. My emphasis is on whether the food tastes delicious or not. If somebody were to set up a restaurant in my part of the world selling equally delicious knock-off dishes from El Bulli and Tetsuya, The Fat Duck and La Ferme de Mon Pere, I'd be happy for it being there whether they gave credit on their menus or not...* I'd imagine that Australians who got to eat at Interlude may feel similarly. Do we have any antipodean readers who experienced this knock-off cuisine first hand? * I'd probably be happier if they did give credit so that what they were doing came onto my radar screen through speedy media coverage... but if they did so, they might be in for quite some trademark litigation, as they're using the famous names of others to draw customers to themselves.

I think that the presumed ethical equivalence of cooking and writing is mistaken. Writers are accustomed to having property rights and consequent powers to exclude. There is no property right in cooking a dish, and never has been. Looking at a cooking situation through a writer's lens brings up writerly codes of ethics and presumptions. Why do they necessarily apply?