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cdh

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Everything posted by cdh

  1. Fundamental misconception... NYT openly disavows "newspaper of record" title, and just did so the other week. See this article: Paper of Record? No Way, No Reason, No Thanks.
  2. When in an office with a hot-water tap on the water cooler, I've always stuck with oolongs and greens that brew well with water at about 180F, as that is the usual temp for such hot-water taps in my experience. No need for boiling water for the teas I happen to like.
  3. You mean to say that egregious D'ag is still there just below 110th St? The injustice of truly worthwhile stores going under while the worst supermarket in the area keeps plodding along... (OK, it is not the worst supermarket ever, but is significantly below the level of everything else that was in the neighborhood.)
  4. AAArghhhhhhhh! This is awful news... Now I'm feeling oooooooold, and I've not been out of Columbia 10 years yet. With Mama Joy's sad departure a couple of years ago (I'm still mourning the loss of their brisket heros), the death of UFM and now West Side too, I'd have no idea where to shop in that neighborhood. I really credit the cheese sections at UFM and Mama Joys with broadening my palate, and much of my early culinary experimentation (after getting off the CU's meal plan the second semester of freshman year) was significantly influenced by the broad selection and good prices at UFM, West Side and Mama Joys. Do culinarily adventurous kids at CU still have any options in the neighborhood, or would they be forced to walk a mile down to the Gourmet Garage at 96th to get some interesting ingredients? Truly disheartening... I still remember West Side's prepared entrees fondly... mmmm... spanikopita...
  5. cdh

    It's brewing time again

    Update time-- This beer's fermentation took off like crazy after about 24 hours--- very steady stream of gas coming out of the bubbler for about three days. Since I had to go out of town (and still am), I removed the brew bucket from the 70 degree ambient temperature of the room it had been in for the first few days and parked it down in the cellar, which is much closer to 50 degrees at this time of year. Hopefully by the time I get back in a few days it will be ready to bottle... but given how big a beer it is, I might just have to rack it and let it continue. We'll see once I get to sample it.
  6. cdh

    A Chef's Beer

    I'm nearly through my supply, which is what prompted the new brew project... Mine took about a month to carbonate fully in the bottles... which made me quite pleased I had the tap-a-draft thingy which really did carbonate the first 6L on bottling day, and provided me with a few weeks of fine beer before I started trying the bottles and finding them not quite there yet. Was a great project, and a fun brew with you all! I'll keep everybody up to date on the progress of the Belgian Blonde that has been in my primary for a week and a half now... feel free to join in that brew too if you feel like something in the vicinity of a Duvel, or a strong Leffe Blonde. I've not been in NYC much recently... if I find myself up there any time soon, I've still got my two give away bottles that I'd gladly tote along to swap.
  7. Have had the thought, and looked around for quinine, but had no luck sourcing any. Would love to know if there is a commercial source of the building blocks of tonic.
  8. cdh

    Nespresso

    I'm visiting a friend who has been singing the praises of his Nespresso machine to me for a while. At home I have the grinder and pump machine and had been a little skeptical that little plastic capsules could come close. My skepticism was a little irrational since I'd gotten a pod accepting machine for use at the office and had no problems with the coffee that came out of the Illy pods. So now I'm here, and so is the Nespresso machine and a half dozen different varieties of the little plastic pods. I'm actually somewhat impressed. The espresso comes out with a beautiful crema, and tastes like a well made shot. The different blends that I've tried so far have shown that there is certainly some diversity of selection. Not the same as if you had a home roasting setup and a broad selection of green beans to play with, but a nice breadth of flavor profiles is available. My one remaining argument against supporting the nespresso system is that it supports the Nescafe empire, with its tendency to view coffee as a bulk commodity and drive prices down to the point that some growers of unusual and interesting beans can't make a living doing so. Just my thoughts for the moment... pretty good coffee system made by a giant corporation.
  9. I'm in if it is on May 3rd! This is sounding exciting!
  10. cdh

    Additives in Domestic Swill

    OK... maybe I'm revealing a huge swath of ignorance running through my chemistry education, but isn't there no such thing as liquid CO2? I thought one of CO2's biggest claims to fame was that it sublimed from solid to gas without ever having a liquid state... dry ice and all that... What's the deal? I'm really worried for the state of nature if Miller can get liquid CO2...
  11. cdh

    Unibroue Has Sold Out

    Bad news for all lovers of Blanche de Chambley, Maudite, La Fin Du Monde, Trois Pistoles and the rest of the Unibroue lineup. The brewery was purchased yesterday by Canadian megabrewer Sleeman. No word on what changes will be made, but my bet is that they're on the way. Stock up on the classics while you can get them! Link to article
  12. cdh

    It's brewing time again

    I have no fear that my beer will come out weak or insipid with 8 pounds of DME and another half pound of candy sugar in there... are you a barleywine brewer? Or were you reading the recipe as an all grain recipe? I've found that British bitter type beers can be made with a pound and a quarter of dry malt extract per gallon... with nearly 2 lbs of fermentable sugars per gallon in this batch, I'm expecting it to come out in the neighborhood of 7% or a bit heavier depending on how low my Wyeast 1214 goes. Plenty strong for me.
  13. Well... if you want to get historical, copyright didn't come into existence in the Common Law world until Queen Anne's reign... 1730's, if I'm recalling correctly. No copyrights at all before that. Patents, on the other hand, were handed out at royal whim, and conferred monopolies on all sorts of stuff on favored individuals and entities. So modern patents are a lot less than they were historically, while copyrights are a hell of a lot more. Trademarks have stayed relatively stable over time, except very recently, when the concept of dilution of famous marks came into fashion, and then got codified.
  14. No. Doesn't work that way. As said before in the thread, there are 4 flavors of IP- --copyrights, which protect original creative expression (and boat hulls), but not facts; --trademarks, which protect the commercial value in the association of a mark with a particular source of goods and prevent the unfair competition of allowing somebody to confuse the consumer as to the source of the product; --patents, which only apply to novel, non-obvious and useful inventions; and --trade secrets, which require a high level of vigilance on the part of the secret owner, and are totally unprotected from reverse engineering. Recipes could only fit in under the trade secret flavor, and doing so would require a proprietor or chef to make everybody to whom he teaches the recipe (or who could come to know the recipe) sign a nondisclosure/noncompete agreement. That is the best way that the law could protect a creative genius in the kitchen, but if the competition come in, sit down and order all of the secret dishes, and figure out the tricks, then they're free to go forth and replicate them all they want.
  15. Depends on their marketing and pricing strategy. I'm not a believer in many products that proclaim themselves to be "SuperPremium"... that is a decision for the market to make once it has sufficient information to come to a conclusion. If they price it at Kahlua+50%, there's no way in hell I'd think about buying it. If they price it even with Kahlua, then I might try when next I run out of Kahlua. If they price it at at Kahlua -20% then I'd go out of my way to try it. After I've tried it, I'll decide whether it is worth buying again, and at what price point.
  16. Good pastis is one of the finer things...
  17. If you're going to purchase a pastis, I'd suggest getting Henri Bardouin pastis. Best of the bunch , as far as I'm concerned... Which reminds me that since it is so warm and pleasant outside, I should bring a bottle up from the cellar and laze about this afternoon with a tall glass, a splash of pastis and a pitcher of ice water.
  18. I've not yet found anything as pleasing as the Austin brewed Celis White was. I really miss that. It had the perfect flavor and body. I find that witbiers succeed or fail based on their mouthfeel more often than not. Some are too dense, some are too thin, but Celis White really was the right balance.
  19. cdh

    It's brewing time again

    This was a 5 gallon batch, so not so small... I'd just noticed I'd forgotten to mention that, kinda taking that size as the uniform standard that everybody would assume... then thought the better of it after the post-editing window had already closed. So, this is a normal sized batch, at least as far as I'm concerned. I don't have a kettle that could handle a 10 or 12 gallon batch, and I only have about 12 gallons worth of bottle space readily to hand, so if I want to drink diversely, I have to brew small.
  20. cdh

    budget wine shopping

    Well, your geography would certainly make a big difference to the answer, and you never said where you were until a couple of your fellow denizens of the mountainous west gave away your secret. Were you in the mid-atlantic east, I'd say go to Moore Bros and pick up the full case of 12 that they sell for $100 and call the Bon Marche collection. Wine shop owned by highly reputed sommellier, which maintains a limited select set of wines... his good taste reaches down into the lower priced wines too. The contents of the collection keep on changing with new interesting stuff making its way in regularly. But since you're nowhere near South Jersey or Delaware, my advice doesn't do too much good for you... particularly since a flight to PHL from Colorado would blow your budget before you got here.
  21. cdh

    It's brewing time again

    There are a few of us here... check out the Chef's Beer thread from a few months back. btw, just noticed I forgot to mention that this was a 5 gallon batch, and was diluted accordingly before the yeast got pitched.
  22. Since the Chef's Beer thread worked out so well last time around as an educational resource for homebrewers, I thought I'd let everybody know that I'm brewing again, and anybody who cares to is welcome to join in the recipe and ask any questions along the way. This time, since it is spring and and sunny and beautiful, I've decided to brew a Belgian Blonde, which should be a great late spring and early summer beer. Recipe follows, largely inspired by something over at the homebrew digest, a great homebrewing resource on the web (hbd.org), but trweaked to fit what my homebrew shop had handy: 4 oz Belgian Biscuit malt 4 oz Belgian aromatic malt 2 oz Caravienne 4 oz Munich malt all steeped in 2 gallons of water at 150 F for 30 minutes and sparged with a half gallon at the same temperature. After removing the grain, bring it to a boil, and add 8 lbs of Munton & Fison extra light dry malt extract, 8 oz of clear candy sugar and 1 oz Pride of Ringwood hops (6.5% AA) and let boil for 45 minutes. add 1/2 oz Stytian Goldings for the last 15 minutes of the boil. pitch with Wyeast belgian abbey type yeast, or ardennes. allow to ferment a couple of weeks, and when yeast activity has subsided rack and prime with 1/2 cup corn sugar and 1/3 cup clear candy sugar. Have fun brewing, and feel free to ask any questions you like.
  23. Tis the season of marshmallow making, it would appear... Just made a big bunch of them the other day. Have been wondering what the differences between the egg-white ones and the whipped gelatine ones are. The final results seem alike... Did I not need those six egg whites in there after all? The recipe I use was from a workshop I took with Dorie Greenspan, and her recipe brought the syrup up to 265, and threw that into some eggwhites at stiff peaks (which double in volume when hit with the hot syrup), and then beating a hell of a lot of gelatine into that. They have turned out perfectly... but a friend who uses just the whipped gelatine method comes up with a nearly identical result . So, pros and cons of the egg white method?
  24. And getting back to the tea... There are very distinct characteristics that define the Darjeeling style of tea and the Assam style of tea, and they go beyond geography. Darjeeling often appears to have been processed in a less mechanized, more rustic manner, evidenced by close examination of a sample of darjeeling. You'll see some unevenness in the leaf color, with the brown oxidized leaf juxtaposed with hints of green, unoxidized leaf... that has always made me wonder about the method they use to roll the leaves before leaving them to wither and oxidize... and become black tea. Darjeeling is always characterized by its high-notes. It has fruity notes, it has sharp notes, it has the capability of becoming quite astringent if brewed with water that is too hot, or left to steep too long. It is fragile, delicate, and easily wrecked by following the instructions printed on every tea box that demands water at a rolling boil and five minutes of steeping time. Assam's dry leaves, on the other hand, generally appears more uniform, and are definitely allowed to oxidize more than Darjeeling is. Assam leaf will always look darker, though the leaf form is more variable. Assam is a center for the CTC method of processing, which takes leaves and machines them into a more uniform appearance, and allows for a much more full oxidization. Some gardens there still use the traditional method that maintains the leaves in a more whole state. The flavor notes of Assams are more low notes. There is a toasty, cookie-like note that is characteristic of Assam teas. Assams can take a more vigorous brewing like the standard tea box instructions. Their tannins don't become so astringent like Darjeeling's do. Beware that these are generalizations, and you'll find that some growers are experimental and do break with the traditions that lead to the tea's characteristics. And... I've not played with enough of the Nilgiris or Dooars to be able to characterize them... does either have a characteristic style? The examples of both that I've tried have been overly astringent and tannic... probably a sign that the growers need some practice... maybe just my poor selections. Anyway, those are my personal thoughts.
  25. The Homeskillet This is a lovely variation on the classic cocktail the Manhattan. It was invented shortly after I picked up my first bottle of Maraschino liqueur as I was playing around to see what it could do. Adding a little to a Manhattan really changed the drink into something new, and my friend and guinea pig who tasted the experiment with me named it. 2 oz. Bourbon (or Rye if you prefer a dryer drink) .5 oz Sweet Vermouth (never Martini and Rossi) .25 (or less) oz Maraschino liqueur 2 dashes Angostura Shake over ice, and serve either up, or over ice with a bit of seltzer. Keywords: Cocktail ( RG969 )
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