cdh

dont worry, i wont put any in yours... ← Thanks!

Thanks for the concern and the warning. I think I've got that under control by using swingtop bottles... I've noticed a couple of signs of distorted gaskets, which is a sign of venting excess pressure.

Cookbooks are also beautiful physical objects which some people actually like to own... On the copyright side of things, all of this is quite caught up in the indefinite-ness of the fair use rules. While there have been court cases (though not the Supreme Court) that have held that even a copying of a computer program into RAM (e.g. to run it) implicates the monopolies granted to a copyright owner, there is a lot of uncertainty that lawyers can argue about for a long time to come as to how the statutory grant of fair use must play out. So to your question about viewing pages of a book on Google, the answer is probably both you and Google have violated the publisher's copyright, unless it is fair use. Google has the resources and the will to experiment and push at the boundaries. Good for them. The copyright system is quite out of balance as it is and needs some renovation... maybe this will instigate that. After all, it's not quite just that you could be slapped with a six-figure judgment for looking up a recipe on Google, is it? Under current law, that's possible...

I'm disturbed by the repetition of the "raw/brown sugar" category. They are DIFFERENT from each other, and should not be lumped together. Raw sugar had gone through far fewer steps of refining... Brown sugar is white sugar with molasses sprayed on it. Wikipedia sez... Molasses in coffee is WRONG!

Just a brief update on these projects-- A few lessons learned: Lesson 1: Roeselare cultures need a long time undisturbed to do their thing and become tasty... four and a half months into this project the first batch is losing its murky flavor and getting the right tartness and complexity. Another month and a half will be a long time to wait, but I think this is going to be a good oud bruin. Lesson 2: Even if you let another yeast do the heavy lifting like my witbier yeast did, adding the Roeselare culture to that batch delayed its drinkability by months. Now I know that if I want to use the stuff, I have to be prepared to wait it out. That said, the witbier at about four months old is getting quite good, though the continuing slow fermentation that has been going on in the bottles thanks to the Roeselare mix has made this batch extra fizzy and likely to slowly fizz up and crawl out of the bottles when opened. The witbier didn't really benefit much from the Roeselare bugs in there... not a complex enough background to complement the effect, I think. Next year, my witbier will be unadulterated. I'll report back with a tasting of the oud bruin once it's really ready.

Mama Palma's did a fine fine job when the Pizza Club visited... definitely worth a visit.

OK Rogov, I admit I have a bad attitude towards White Zins. That said, I'll admit I've had inoffensive to nearly tasty white zins. They do exist. I want to like white zins because I like pink wines generally... that's why I keep tasting the white zins that cross my path in hopes of finding something really good. I've also had some awful ones, that do indeed have the overripe rotting fruit notes I've mentioned. I stand by that observation. Bad white zins are not bad because they're pink, or because they're sweet, but because they're BAD.

Well, neither cheap German export product or Ernest & Julio's finest ever exuded the odor of decay that badly made white zins do... When your grapes get old and moldy, you make them into vinegar, not over-sweetened pink wine! That's why the "noble rot" gets its promotion to nobility.... other rots just make vinegar.

Get some vinegar mother. Drop it into white zin. Wait a month. Voila! Pink vinegar. Completely hides white zin's overripe rotting fruit notes. And it's pretty.

A good piece of writing... did Ruhlman have anything to do with the book, or are the Psalti just riffing on his meme? As to the criticism of escapist literature above, well... this seems more like a map than technical manual... how to get from where you are to running the French Laundry. It may be a idiosyncratic map, but it is one nonetheless. So, project, it doesn't tell you any equations that might help you calibrate your hotplate to perfectly produce your beef stroganoff... but it does demonstrate how a real person made the real trip from Long Island to Yountville behind a stove. Belittle it as unrepeatable if you like, and certainly unmathematical, but it is anything but fantasy.

Indeed. Starfruit is all but tasteless as far as mixology goes... I can't think of a spirit that wouldn't wipe out its flavor. It's visually striking, and watery and refreshing... but not flavorful in any way. Come to think of it, running starfruit through a veg juicer might add an interesting twist to the new cocktail a friend and I have been playing with. The Tastes Like Salad v.2* (up to this point) is gin, cucumber juice, tomato water, diced serrano chile, salt and pepper. I think a bit of starfruit juice might work in there... a vegetal, slightly sweet thing. hmmmm... and it would keep the pretty emerald green color. Not enough savory cocktails out there. One can consume only so many Bullshots. * v.1 was based on Dr. Brown's CelRay soda... but was too sweet...

There are some other interesting juice options at TJs that make fine drinks. I find that their apricot-peach blend mixes very well with bourbon and a shake of Fee's Peach Bitters. The cherry cider strikes me as a prime candidate for a drink of some sort, but I've not figured out what it is yet. The mango-passionfruit blend goes fine with rum, but seems like it might play well with whisky as well. All of them have a good sweet to tart balance, so they mix very well on their own...

With the much greater variety of fruit juices available for mixological exploitation today, I was wondering if anybody had given much thought to building drinks for them. This summer my Trader Joes has been stocking a fine blueberry juice, which I've been playing with in drinks. Was wondering if others have been doing the same. My most pleasing creation so far has been the following, which I'm tempted to call the Pie Juice 1.5 oz Gin (Gordons or something with similar christmas tree flavor profile) 2 dashes Fee's Aromatic bitters 5 oz blueberry juice Top with seltzer The bitters give it a real spicy pie character that is very very nice. The gin and the blueberry juice really seem to play well together. Presents a very wine-like appearance. Come on and tell us about your experimentation with blueberry juice... or start threads on other newly available juices and their mixological applications you've discovered.

ask 'em here and see what kind of answers you get...

Hmmm... To start off the list with some international selections that challenge the dominant yellow lager meme: England- Gale's HSB- A florally aromatic bitter brewed in the south of England. Theakston's Old Peculier- A rich dark beer brewed in Yorkshire. Marston's Pedigree pulled from a cask- A fine bitter with a hop character remniscent of grapefruit. Belgian- 1 each of the trappist brews, just because they're so famous and each is so different. Decide for yourself whether you love Orval or detest it. A selection of Guezes- there is a wide array of choices in this sour beer style. These are beers that don't taste like what Americans think of as beer. Rodenbach- Flemish sour red ale. Almost tastes more of wine than of beer. If you can get your hands on it, their Alexander was fabulous... but hasn't been made for a long while. Goudenband- another sour belgian ale... this time a dark beer. Everybody should drink this beer just to broaden their conception of what beer is and can be. Dutch- A Heinekin in Holland. It really loses something when it gets far away from home.

Agreed... sad news. I'd planned on it. Hopefully it will reemerge in the spring.

Can't wait!

Wine bar? Gotta concentrate on the cheeses... such a leg up in the marketing too, if they can latch onto the wine and cheese meme that already resides in everybody's head. Find a good supplier of interesting cheeses, a good bakery for some breads, and write up a menu-like booklet with recommended pairings of wines with cheeses, and I'd bet they'd sell. Don't clutter the menu up with too much extraneous stuff. Keep a variety of cheeses, and rotate a few of them seasonally or keep a slot open for new stuff that's interesting. There's enough variety amongst the various cheeses that keeping something on hand to please just about any palate would be easy.

hmmm... tried the boiled shiso drink, and found that the apple cider vinegar flavor ran all over the shiso flavor, nearly obscuring it. Must try with rice vinegar instead... or maybe just more lemon juice. This shiso techique would be a great way of making pink lemonade!

Gunpowder is pieces of leaf rolled into little tiny pellets... pearl teas like yours will unfurl into whole leaves... Other differences are in the processing... gunpowders are more aggressively fired, giving them a much different flavor.

I think it is a fine descriptor. To me it invokes the iron-rich flavor you get when you suck on a paper cut. Fresh blood tastes like iron, amongst other stuff. "Bloody iron" invokes all of that. Next time you get a paper cut, give it a taste and you'll see what I mean. And as a wine descriptor, it totally works... there are wines out there whose aromas have reminded me of bloody meat...

So was the Celis brewery in Austin. Bland industrial parks don't make for bad beers.

This has been a great blog... Sort of like reading Barzun's From Dawn To Decadence... I didn't grok the whole of it, but I did get the gist, and the ideas were worth considering. I don't need my thoughts ground into paste and spoon fed to me...

Haven't been, but love their beers as well. If you're up for company on the jaunt, drop a PM and let me know when you're going.

Maybe it's just me, but category mistakes get on my nerves. Talking about an "open source beer" is sort of like talking about a skinless boneless chocolate bar. Extolling the absence of something that was never there in the first place. Copyright law makes all software (and any other creative expression fixed in a tangible medium) come into existence shackled and bound to its creator (or their employer). To GPL an original work is a voluntary abandonment of a number of very restrictive rights that the law automatically hands out. The copyright powers are what enable the GPL to force people to publish their code if they make a derivative work based on a GPL'ed work. It is a big deal. Beer is born free. I could, through experimentation, generate a beer identical to that of any commercial brewery, and they don't have a legal right to stop me. There is no abandonment of any rights involved in publishing your beer recipe. Tracing beer evolution through printed recipes is also, I think, a pointless exercise. Two brewers making the same recipe will undoubtedly generate different flavored beers just through their own habits and materials. You ferment in a carboy, I ferment in a bucket... You time the boil from when the thermometer says 212, I time the boil from when there are rolling bubbles on top of my kettle... You use 240L chocolate malt, I use 350L, etc.