Culinary Conversations

[worth1]

Not food but I've been watching a guy from New Zealand make whiskey and other distilled spirits.
Very interesting to say the least.
Not your common bootlegger but someone that knows what they are doing.

That be Jesse, perhaps, “Still it” on YouTube?

Yeah that's him.

[worth1]

@karstopography
I found him looking up information on why cheap rum made you feel like you've been poisoned the next day.
I knew a little but I wanted to get the information right due to a conversation I had at work with another guy.

Coming from a background where everyone knew about white lightning and who made it there are some really shady people out there squeezing everything they can out of a run.
This includes the methanol from the heads of the run and the nasty tails.
Improper cleaning and so on.

My very first drink of hard alcohol was white lightning back when I was about 10 years old.

[karstopography]

9508DACD-20E3-478E-81CC-98C20751C0B3.jpeg

The jars are frosted because they came out of the freezer. A white dog being aged on wood I toasted and charred. It’s perfectly legal to buy a white dog at the liquor store and then do your own ageing on your own wood.

I think some of the worst of the moonshiner bunch added cheap and deadly wood alcohol to the white lightning to increase profits. Or they’d run it through a still thinking they could clean it up.

The worst mashes or washes for producing methanol are fruit mashes, especially high pectin fruits like plums and apples. Grape Marc washes are also known to be high in methanol. Every country has legal limits on acceptable levels of methanol. There’s no practical or affordable way to remove every last percentage of methanol from ethanol. The wash or mash needs to not be too high on methanol to begin with.

Europe has a big tradition of turning the fruit or grain or potato harvest into eau de vie, the water of life. Calvados, brandy, geists, schnapps, grappa, slivovitz, kilju, tons of names for similar stuff. Every village or chateau had or has a still. I think parts of Mexico and Latin America are the same. Grain based mashes or washes tend to be naturally lower in methanol. Almost all fruit has some naturally occurring methanol in it.

The US is the likely the most uptight about making, distillation of spirits at home with the exception of the more fundamentalist Islamic world. Europe not so much. It’s legal to perform distillation at home in New Zealand. Australia has a huge underground home distillation movement as commercially available spirits are super expensive there.

The US has a lot of home distillation going on, maybe some are selling it, but many are doing it just for personal use and are craft oriented, chasing flavors rather than volume.

Methanol is distributed throughout the run, there’s sort of a myth it is all in the heads. The heads do have a lot of nasty acetone and other undesirable, untasty weird alcohols and components in tiny, yet noticeable amounts. The hearts are what people are chasing, mostly just ethanol and tasty esters. The tails get some great flavors, but too far in get wet cardboard flavors and who wants that?

It’s a fascinating subject, distillation, to me anyway, one that I might have some first hand experience and exposure to.

Like I already said, A person can purchase a legal white dog whiskey from the liquor store and flavor, age it, with toasted or charred wood. White Oak is the standard. Cherry works. Old American Chestnut is primo and unfortunately functionally extinct, but people buy old chestnut furniture to use to flavor or age white whisky or brandy on.

[worth1]

I have a ton of white and red oak flooring leftover from my garage floor project.
Its raw wood no varnish.
I can also tell the difference from the two.
I've been considering using the white oak scrap for flavoring spirits.
I have milled untold thousands (maybe millions) of feet of oak, it puts out a sweet smell.
For the novice you can blow smoke through a red oak dowle you can't with white oak.
This is why they built barrels and ships with white oak.
Red oak would rot.

[worth1]

Some of you that have heard me yapping from the back row have read about my use of the Knorr bullion powder.
The last one I used was the tomato bullion powder.
It was used as a dry rub on the pork ribs along with the curing salt and Chipotle powder.
The tomato bullion powder alone was well worth it.
Y'all might give it a go.

[karstopography]

I wonder how Live Oak, a type of white oak, would do in a taste comparison with a more traditional White Oak? Post oak is a White Oak and the standard long cook wood of most Texas BBQ joints. Wonder which white Oak species the Bourbon barrel coopers are using? Seems like I read most the wood is coming out of Missouri.

[worth1]

I keep running across videos where they talk about the difference between competition BBQ and eating BBQ.
They say this is for competition and you wouldn't want to eat it for a meal.
Well then what's the point?
It's like having a stuck up super model for a husband or wife.
These are competition husbands and wives.
You wouldn't actually want them for a real spouse.
Al little out on a limb in comparison but its true.

When I was in the Lake Jackson area we had a guy that did competition BBQ.
He did a BBQ for our Christmas party one year.
The brisket sucked.
It was so salty you couldn't eat it.
He asked how I liked the BBQ.
I said it was way too salty too many spices.
He said that's because it's competition BBQ.
Well it ain't something you would serve a crowd of people I replied.
Nobody liked the brisket it was so salty.
I felt I had to be honest because it was my idea to sell scrap metal to raise money for the meat and party.
Everyone brought a side.
The home office decided to cancel Christmas that year at some fancy place in Houston.
I never went anyway.
Well to the devil with them we'll have our own.
The guy couldn't cook food people could eat he was so hung up on the idea of competition BBQ being the best.
Another reason I was honest is because he said I couldn't cook a good brisket because I wasn't in competition BBQ cook offs.
Really.
He also boiled shrimp for at least 20 minutes.
Seriously?

[worth1]

I wonder how Live Oak, a type of white oak, would do in a taste comparison with a more traditional White Oak? Post oak is a White Oak and the standard long cook wood of most Texas BBQ joints. Wonder which white Oak species the Bourbon barrel coopers are using? Seems like I read most the wood is coming out of Missouri.

If it's coming out of Missouri it's probably post oak.
The forest is full of it and other types of trees.
It's straight grained and easy to work with.
Thus the name post oak.
People would cut it down and split long logs the length of a post to make fence posts.
Two old dudes in their 70's used to make a living building fencing thus way.
I was good friends with their grand son and we always went fishing with each other.
His other grandfather took us fishing he always had a slimy chewd up cigar in his mouth with slobbers hanging off it.
He acted mean but he wasn't.
That old man carted us all over the country looking for the best fishing holes.

[karstopography]

@worth1 A friend of mine does competition barbecue for the company he works for. He too admits competition barbecue is really made to “wow” some judge that likely is biting into 20 briskets or ribs and really isn’t fit to eat very much of it. He said competition ribs are always underdone (to his and my tastes) so that if the meat doesn’t completely cling to the bone, you get points off. Sounds like the whole competition barbecue thing is just stupid if that’s how it works.

I like barbecue that whatever is added compliments the flavor of whatever meat it is, but isn’t overpowering. Some people put so much smoke on it it might all well be a piece of charred wood. Or they over spice it or use too much salt. A lot of these pre mixed rubs are maxed out on MSG. Too much MSG added on barbecue gets sort of an unpleasant, bitter or weird taste. Like the MSG over heightens or over emphasizes the otherwise pleasant and subtle caramelized, smoky notes of the wood smoke.

[worth1]

Folks sometimes well practically all the time I see people using yeast on cooking videos.
Their recipes call for packets of yeast.
Well by hoot I don't buy packets of yeast.
I buy jars of yeast.
Very perplexing to say the least.
When using yeast.
The mystery is solved once and for all.

We all know that recipes typically call for a “packet” of yeast. But how much yeast is actually hiding inside? One yeast packet will typically contain 2 ¼ teaspoons of yeast, which can also be measured as ¼ ounce or seven grams.

Now you know and you heard it here, your trusted source for all things cooking and baking.

[Sue_CT]

Don't think I have bought a packet of yeast in 20 or 30 years, at least since the local invention of Costco. My sister on the other hand, refuses to buy anything else. I wonder if she would have any idea of how to use a Costco size package of yeast.

[karstopography]

Mead, beer, wine, whiskey makers get very picky about their yeast. There are so many different strains of yeast that produce different levels of ethanol and other flavors, esters. Yeast strains, like tomato cultivars, get trendy. Kveik yeast is pretty trendy. There are several versions of that. These got discovered and isolated from farms in Norway.

Using baker’s yeast to make any kind of libation, that’s basically reserved for prison hooch.

Yeast is definitely not yeast as far as any brewers, winemakers, or distillers are concerned.

[Sue_CT]

Seems fine for bread, though.

[karstopography]

Right, baker’s yeast still produces ethanol when they consume sugars in bread and all yeast bread has some measurable ethanol in it up to about 2.0%.

People actually get drunk from yeast bread, but because they have a particular disorder and not so much the alcohol in yeast bread.

https://www.mashed.com/209573/the-real- ... off-bread/

[Danny]

We buy our yeast by the pound, keeps well enough in the freezer that way and we use it a lot.

[pepperhead212]

I buy my yeast by the pound, too, and keep it refrigerated. I have found that in about a year and a half it starts getting a little less active, though it's probably still more active than the old stuff we used to use! I'm always down to the last few tb when I start noticing this, and just add a little more, to make up for it. I just got another pound in March!

[worth1]

I buy mine in the small 4 ounce jars and keep it in the freezer.
For my particular uses it serves me better to have the yeast stored away unopened in smaller 4 ounce containers.
Not really understanding the packet of yeast thing and how and when it got started so I did some research.
It appears that it was developed during WWII so soldiers could have fresh baked bread.
Considering the adverse conditions it seems reasonable to have such a convenience in and around the battlefield.
Like many other things first developed right before or during the war it carried over into the civilian population.
Like SPAM.

[MissS]

@worth1 A friend of mine does competition barbecue for the company he works for. He too admits competition barbecue is really made to “wow” some judge that likely is biting into 20 briskets or ribs and really isn’t fit to eat very much of it. He said competition ribs are always underdone (to his and my tastes) so that if the meat doesn’t completely cling to the bone, you get points off. Sounds like the whole competition barbecue thing is just stupid if that’s how it works.

I like barbecue that whatever is added compliments the flavor of whatever meat it is, but isn’t overpowering. Some people put so much smoke on it it might all well be a piece of charred wood. Or they over spice it or use too much salt. A lot of these pre mixed rubs are maxed out on MSG. Too much MSG added on barbecue gets sort of an unpleasant, bitter or weird taste. Like the MSG over heightens or over emphasizes the otherwise pleasant and subtle caramelized, smoky notes of the wood smoke.

We have our very own competition BBQ'r here on this site who has some nice wins behind him. He makes some amazing food. You may know him as Rajun Gardener.

[worth1]

I've steered away from traditional offset smoker type BBQ and more into the Mexican and Latin America style for the most part.
It's pretty much what I was raised on and I like the flavors better.
Meat cooking over hot mesquite charcoal till rare to medium rare.
Takes less than 3 minutes.

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[karstopography]

@worth1 with those Mexican grills you can plan the fire to have hot and cooler spots and move on and off the direct flame as needed. The smoke I believe isn’t trapped so much and more subtle, is that what you observe?

I buy the mesquite lump charcoal from HEB. El arriero, the muleteer. It’s about the cheapest in town. From Mexico.

My large BGE lacks the space of a Mexican style grill. I can build the fire to be on one side for direct and a cooler, indirect side and cook with the lid open so the smoke isn’t trapped. I just can’t do a lot of food that way at one time like a Mexican grill can.