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Can't you just turn potato peels into lovely vodka?
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Jan 23, 2019 16:09
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Halloween Jack posted:Can't you just turn potato peels into Yes, absolutely. Anything with sugars in it can be used to make alcohol 
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Jan 23, 2019 16:14
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In the satirical novel "Adventures of the soldier Ivan Chonkin" a self styled inventor serves Ivan some homemade vodka and later described how he made it from animal droppings and sugar. Ivan is not amused.
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Jan 23, 2019 18:06
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My favorite apocryphal story about Russians and vodka is still the MiG-25. It used ethanol as coolant for some reason (various reasons I've heard include that it wouldn't freeze at northern airbases and that the radar required it, among other things). However, alcohol for consumption was forbidden at said bases due to alcoholism, so the mechanics just decided that they needed to replenish the coolant on their MiGs rather more frequently than required by the manual.
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Jan 27, 2019 18:56
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Leraika posted:Anyone have any good resources for ancient Roman cooking? I'm not brave enough to try cooking straight from Apicius. Go with the leek and beets with raisin wine. I used reduced port for the wine instead. I have a copy of De Re Coquinaria that's a plain translation and I have another copy that's a little more human readable. "Cooking Apicius" by Sally Grainger. It's much more readable but it's kind of fun to work off the Latin. Apicius XI 97 in the link. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Apicius/3*.html It will turn out sharper in taste than you think but remember that less is more. The beets and leeks really stand on their own.
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Jan 28, 2019 00:15
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Shooting Blanks posted:My favorite apocryphal story about Russians and vodka is still the MiG-25. It used ethanol as coolant for some reason (various reasons I've heard include that it wouldn't freeze at northern airbases and that the radar required it, among other things). However, alcohol for consumption was forbidden at said bases due to alcoholism, so the mechanics just decided that they needed to replenish the coolant on their MiGs rather more frequently than required by the manual. (I learned that story out of MIG Pilot, the biography of Viktor Belenko, a MiG-25 pilot.)
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Jan 28, 2019 00:16
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Vavrek posted:Apocryphal? Yeah, that definitely happened. Hell, look at American torpedo juice. Wherever you have pure ethanol people are gonna use it to get hosed up.
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Jan 28, 2019 03:07
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Lmao at the bit on page two about " It's really loving weird that they specify that bay leaves should be added that late. I can only assume that it's a case of "MUST MAKE MAXIMUM USE OF LIMITED SPICES!!!!!!!" and ""ANY FLAVOR IS BETTER THAN NO FLAVOR" because you really, really need to add bay leaves early on: Putting your bay leaves in early is good and proper. If you don't it gives your dish a eucalyptus/menthol smell/taste, which probably isn't what you want. It takes time to cook off the offputting flavors they can impart. It takes like 45 minutes to an hour to cook that flavor off and pressure cooker recipes are cutting it close. I cook a dish that's only spiced with salt, pepper and bay leaf and the pressure cooker makes the whole place smell like Vick's until it seals. In the US fresh and dried bay leaf are two different plants. Fresh is much, much more eucalyptus/medicinal smelling and tasting than dried. I'm really not sure if people that use "fresh bay leaves" know why they add bay leaves or even what they do to a dish. Dried bay leaves are better in every way to fresh unless you want your dish to taste like use cough drops as a "spice." Bay leaves are pretty subtle so I can understand a 1940's Russian cookbook author wanting them to make the most impact as possible on a meal despite that impact being not-good. I know it's been mentioned before in this thread about how the use of spices used to be used to indicate wealth rather than make good tasting food... https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/03/ask-the-food-lab-whats-the-point-of-bay-leaves.html (I wonder where I put my old Russian cookbook. Pre-Communist recipes, IIRC. There might be some recipes suited to this thread. A running theme in the book is "..and then top it with caviar.") Ugly In The Morning posted:Wherever you have pure ethanol people are gonna use it to get hosed up. ..even if it's not pure, or even ethanol, or if it's been poisoned to prevent drinking and will kill them... Prohibition was a really monumentally hosed up thing. MisterOblivious fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Jan 28, 2019 |
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Jan 28, 2019 06:21
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I love the taste/smell of fresh bay. I actually think it's great in desserts, too.
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Jan 28, 2019 16:31
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Thoht posted:I love the taste/smell of fresh bay. I actually think it's great in desserts, too. Bay leaf shortbread is divine
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Jan 28, 2019 17:04
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Now I'm confused about bay leaves - there's the one we think of as 'bay' over here on the other side of the pond that can be used either fresh or dried. Comes from a laurel type bush (got two in the garden, great and easy to grow). Has that typical bay leaf smell/taste as described above (bitter when fresh or just added, cooks down to a nice floral-y herb-y smell) Then there's the Indian bay version, which is more like a cinnamon-y smell, quite fragile. The uses above sound like neither, so is there another plant known as bay in the US?
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Jan 29, 2019 09:22
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MisterOblivious posted:unless you want your dish to taste like use cough drops as a "spice." edible camphor is an ingredient in some indian dishes
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Jan 29, 2019 12:19
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pim01 posted:Now I'm confused about bay leaves - there's the one we think of as 'bay' over here on the other side of the pond that can be used either fresh or dried. Comes from a laurel type bush (got two in the garden, great and easy to grow). Has that typical bay leaf smell/taste as described above (bitter when fresh or just added, cooks down to a nice floral-y herb-y smell) There's multiple varieties of bay, same as like basil (thai basil etc). As far as using bay in shortbread, that's not a common use.
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Jan 29, 2019 12:34
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The "bay" herb used most commonly in the States is bay laurel.
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Jan 29, 2019 13:00
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You guys might appreciate this. My wife and I have been watching a show called Lords and Ladles on Netflix. 3 Irish chefs travel around to estates/castles in Ireland, learn about the history of the estate, and cook a meal that was once presented there. So far the earliest one has been in the 1600's. We enjoy it, and it definitely fits in with this thread.
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Jan 29, 2019 15:11
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I love it when one of the guys gets super stressed and starts repeating "oh, Jesus!" over and over.
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Jan 29, 2019 17:35
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There's California bay leaves, which have a much stronger, one-note menthol/eucalyptus flavor than the more subtle, nuanced Turkish bay leaves. Indian bay leaf is actually from a variety of cinnamon tree (that happens to actually be related to bay laurel; cinnamon and bay are actually a natural combination flavor-wise), hence its more cinnamony aroma.
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Feb 2, 2019 03:11
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I got some cask-conditioned “real ale” for the first time: Mayflower Porter served at the Blackmoore Kitchen & Bar in Charlestown, MA, served in a way that basically makes it a duplicate of 1870s working class Englishman’s beer. The beer is entered into the cask unpasteurized and unfiltered. The yeast is settled with something like isinglass so it’s at the bottom of the keg and the beer is pumped out with a hand pump. No CO2 or nitrogen, just mild natural carbonation from the secondary fermentation in the cask. You need to be very careful with primitive serving like this. It goes bad within a week or two and starts losing flavor after just 48 hours, and it needs to be served around 55 degrees Fahrenheit for optimum flavor. Every cask is slightly different from the last and it’s served “warm” and nearly flat, which makes it the polar opposite of cold, fizzy lagers like most people drink today.
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Feb 9, 2019 17:36
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chitoryu12 posted:I got some cask-conditioned “real ale” for the first time: Mayflower Porter served at the Blackmoore Kitchen & Bar in Charlestown, MA, served in a way that basically makes it a duplicate of 1870s working class Englishman’s beer. But was it any good?
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Feb 11, 2019 15:00
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CzarChasm posted:But was it any good? I enjoyed it, but it would be very shocking to someone who isn't a beer snob like me! It has very little in common with the mass market idea of "beer" and your initial instinct is that it's been left lying out for a day or two before you got handed the glass. It's also really easy to gently caress up because of how delicate and perishable it is, so if the bar isn't familiar with how to handle cask-conditioned ales you can easily be handed something disgusting.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:05
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I personally wasn't a huge fan of the cask ales I've tried. They felt a lot more one-dimensional to me without the extra carbonation to help balance the sweetness of the malt.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:27
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I’ve had some in England at a CAMRA fest that were so underattenuated that you could taste barley hulls between your teeth. But really the worst thing you can call most of them is “really drinkable.” Stopping by a pub after an overnight flight to Heathrow and then a long cab ride to Portsmouth, it always took an effort of will not to just pound the full pint of whatever IPA they had in one swallow.
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Mar 8, 2019 01:27
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Phanatic posted:I’ve had some in England at a CAMRA fest that were so underattenuated that you could taste barley hulls between your teeth. But really the worst thing you can call most of them is “really drinkable.” Stopping by a pub after an overnight flight to Heathrow and then a long cab ride to Portsmouth, it always took an effort of will not to just pound the full pint of whatever IPA they had in one swallow. I've got a lot of will to never let an IPA near my mouth, actually.
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Mar 8, 2019 14:50
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chitoryu12 posted:I've got a lot of will to never let an IPA near my mouth, actually. IPA's get cask conditioned all the time. They are quite nice. I'm also just now under the impression that my mouth is broken. When I get served a beer my boyfriend says is bitter, it just tastes sweeter to me.
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Mar 8, 2019 15:43
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chitoryu12 posted:I've got a lot of will to never let an IPA near my mouth, actually. Most English IPAs aren't anything like the ones made in the US
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Mar 8, 2019 17:00
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Riptor posted:Most English IPAs aren't anything like the ones made in the US Yeah, I've had both. I find the style generally unbalanced in favor of hops, with a lot of American ones just completely overdoing it and making something almost undrinkably bitter. I also hate beers that try to mix hop bitterness with sweet fruit or floral notes, because to my mouth it just ends up tasting like shampoo. Unibroue A Tout Le Monde is a big offender there.
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Mar 8, 2019 18:16
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While we're on the topic, does anyone know any good historical gruit-type beers? My understanding is that hops only became the predominant beer flavouring circa the 14th-16th century, and I'd be interested in trying any modern reconstructions of beers from before that.
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Mar 9, 2019 02:57
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Jo Joestar posted:While we're on the topic, does anyone know any good historical gruit-type beers? My understanding is that hops only became the predominant beer flavouring circa the 14th-16th century, and I'd be interested in trying any modern reconstructions of beers from before that. Fraoch is great https://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/beer/fraoch
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Mar 9, 2019 11:54
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https://www.gruitday.com/ and check out participating breweries. We make a gruit using sweet gale, yarrow, mugwort, and horehound. Unfortunately we don't bottle it at all, pub only. Great Basin Brewing Co, if you ever make it to Reno, NV.
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Mar 9, 2019 17:16
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skrapp mettle posted:https://www.gruitday.com/ and check out participating breweries. Great basin started making a good beer and not just relying on Icky market saturation? How long do you have it?
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Mar 9, 2019 19:55
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Jo Joestar posted:While we're on the topic, does anyone know any good historical gruit-type beers? My understanding is that hops only became the predominant beer flavouring circa the 14th-16th century, and I'd be interested in trying any modern reconstructions of beers from before that. Dogfish Head does a number of beers that are (to varying degrees) based on the work of Dr. Patrick McGovern, a biochemical archaeologist at Penn. https://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/?page_id=10 So this is stuff where they find ancient vessels that once held beer or wine and he figures out what was in them. I'm not going to say that what they wind up bottling is all that similar to the original beers; even if the ingredients are the same they still are trying to make something palatable to people who drink beer today, precise historical duplication isn't what they're going for. But some of them are pretty tasty; better than I'd have expected, at any rate. https://www.dogfish.com/blog/ancient-ales Also seconding Fraoch. Similar concept but different: Yards has a number of supposedly more-or-less authenticish colonial-era beers. One is a spruce beer based on a Ben Franklin recipe. https://beerconnoisseur.com/articles/history-spruce-beer Phanatic fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Mar 10, 2019 |
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Mar 10, 2019 18:26
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Mr. Wiggles posted:Great basin started making a good beer and not just relying on Icky market saturation? Texted one of the pub guys yesterday to see if we still have it on and he still hasn't responded. We made it for Gruit Day. I'll have one of the gang forward on their weekly inventory tomorrow and see if we still have it. I work at the production brewery making Icky. The pubs brew more interesting things.
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Mar 10, 2019 22:47
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We are down to a keg at each pub, basically about a week's worth.
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Mar 11, 2019 23:03
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skrapp mettle posted:We are down to a keg at each pub, basically about a week's worth. Bummer. Well, maybe next time.
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Mar 12, 2019 05:43
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Here's another fun attempt by someone to make ancient bread. https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/...r%3D783%23pti21
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Apr 15, 2019 15:25
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golden bubble posted:Here's another fun attempt by someone to make ancient bread. 
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Apr 15, 2019 16:17
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I have plans for eventually doing the same thing, but using part of the bread to make beer Sumerian-style.
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Apr 15, 2019 17:01
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Ok good well I hope you're all down for being cursed
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Apr 16, 2019 04:31
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Zereth posted:he ends the thread without saying how it tastes, though. he did, though it's hard to infer much from it. https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1117967001568210944?s=20 serve hot, with a drizzle of sarcophagus juice.
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Apr 16, 2019 04:38
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uber_stoat posted:he did, though it's hard to infer much from it.  And I guess he seems to like it, at least?
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Apr 16, 2019 10:11
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