FlaSoxxJim

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 10, 2011 -> 08:18 AM) Money is always a problem for us normal people so there are trade offs. The biggest is that I don't do any drinking at bars (very rarely anyway). Interestingly, my switch from beer to spirits is essentially chronicaled in this thread. In the same boat, the fact that I don't do a lot of bar drinking means have a little more discretionary spending that can be directed toward the home bar. On the rare occasions any more wen I do find myself at a bar (maybe once a week after work, sometimes on a weekend with the wife), it is almost always a craft beer bar because craft cocktail bars just don't exist here.

Arrested Development The Critic Big Love

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Aug 10, 2011 -> 02:11 AM) Their website says 6.9% That is only for the Private Reserve line. All of their core styles average 4.5% abv. That doesn't mean they are not by and large great products, because they are.

Tex that's why I wonder how much of Jackie Kennedy's Homemaker Princess of Camelot act was just an affectation — basically her playing the role and not really showing much of her self. I never though much about it until watching the ABC White House Tour reels just a couple of years ago. I don't know if it was her reading from a script, being camera shy, or what, but to me she just comes off as completely vapid in that hour-long slice of media history. Certainly she was more engaging than she comes off here.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Aug 8, 2011 -> 11:41 PM) I'm bookmarking this thread for a few years from now, when I (hopefully) actually have many to buy a variety of liquors. It's so hard to experiment when I can only buy one standard bottle (i.e. 1 fifth of Bacardi, 1 of Smirnoff, etc.). I was so near-exclusively a craft beer beer person in my earlier adult years that I honestly was probably 29 years old before I ever had more than 1 or 2 bottles of any booze around at one time. And those bottles would sit on a shelf for a couple of years before they'd get emptied. Funny thing is, drinking wasn't necessarily much cheaper for me back then because you still shelled out for decent beer. The last few days I have been playing with gin. This evening, a Bramble made with Plymouth Gin came together very nicely and went down just as easily. Now the nightcap is a Basil Smash which is just lovely. I made it with Martin Miller's Gin (a very good Hendrick's substitute with some of the same cucumber nuances). The mini gin kick started last Thursday with a drink I cobbled together for TND: Sparkiling that I called the London Calling that came out quite well. 2oz Pimms, 1oz Martin Miller's, 3oz R.White's Lemonade (fizzy),1 dash Ango. On ice in a Collins glass.

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 8, 2011 -> 10:06 PM) Suggestions on making pimento dram? Specifically what sugar and rum? I considered Wray but the blogs seem to side with Lemon Hart (I haven't seen that around here though I haven't looked that hard). I am thinking of mixing Wray and ED12 and using demerara sugar. The recipe I have used with very good results is Paul Clarke's, and that may well be the recipe you are starting out with as well. You really do have to wait around a month before the stuff is palatable, but it is worth the wait. Now that I have finally talked one local shop to stock St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram I don't have to go the homebrew route. The St. Elizabeth is the better andf more complex of the two drams when tasted side-by-side, but the homemade version works well on everything I have tried it in. As for the rum choice, I didn't have access to LH 151 either, so I just did a straight substitution with Cruzan 151. If I was to do this again without LH, I would probably use Goslings 151 which is more richly flavored than Cruzan. I actually think your Plan of using J Wray and ED 12 is perfectly fine, and I think the fruity funky high end flavors of j Wray will work very well in the dram. Good luck, and have patience while it matures!

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Aug 8, 2011 -> 05:36 PM) Name this One hit wonder Hint: The song that put this woman on the map was written by Prince(should be fairly easy now) Sinead O'Connor. "One hit wonder sells" this very talented musician very short, but certainly that one mega monster hit Prince song is what catapulted her to superstardom.

QUOTE (The Sir @ Aug 8, 2011 -> 09:28 PM) Then she takes the high road. That's the upstanding thing to do. Not engaging an affair of revenge. Two wrongs do not make a right. By sticking with her husband for the good of his presidency and fir the country I think a sound argument can be made that she took the high road. that doesn't mean she should have rolled over and been totally victimized by letting her husband pursue countless secret affairs without consequence. Again, I seeking to understand and explain her reactionary behavior and not condone it.

QUOTE (The Sir @ Aug 8, 2011 -> 06:29 PM) She had retaliatory affairs? What classy behavior for the "First Lady". There was nothing honorable or presidential in how JFK behaved in his marriage, but his philandering does not excuse Jackie doing the same thing. I've been cheated on before. I didn't use that as a justification to cheat on either that person or future girlfriends. I confronted them and ended the relationship. That's the honorable thing to do. But people who cheat on their lovers simply because their lovers cheated on them are scum. Cowardly scum. Just lost a lot of respect for Jackie O. I don't want to sound like I am condoning infidelity either, but under these circumstances I can understand her resorting to "retaliatory affairs." JFK was, by all accounts, a serial adulterer. Your advice to confront an unfaithful spouse and then leave him/her makes sense for most normal people, but not for the highest profile couple in the world. Given the Catholic Church's stance on divorce and the fact that there was enormous pressure for the first Catholic psident to be successful, there would have obviously been a huge incentive to keep JFK's transgressions under wraps. As First Lady, Jackie would have had a huge number of insiders exerting extremej prressure to keep quiet and to stick it out with her husband. Certainly, she would have pleaded with her husband to get him to cut the crap, and obviously he fused to do so. Given all of that, I think I understand how Jackie could eventually think she had no choice but to give Jack a taste of his own medicine. I am actually far from being a big fan of Jackie Kennedy-Onassis. I do think there was a gold digger aspect to her, and film of her that I saw recently (her famous White House television tour) left me feeling that she was rather shallow - a pretty socialite and little more. But that may have just been the role she was forced into, and an unfair characterization on my part.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Aug 8, 2011 -> 04:43 PM) I'm sure she would have felt much worse if she weren't under such heavy sedation. I smell an oblique Spinal Tap reference!

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Aug 6, 2011 -> 11:57 PM) This thread makes me wish Flaxx was my crazy neighbor. I have to be somebody's crazy neighbor, so it might as well be you. Friends, family and neighbors do get used as guinea pigs for a lot of my boozy adventures. My poor wife gets the brunt of it. Her cocktail wheelhouse is quite narrow though, and when she takes a sip of something new and recoils in horror, that's when I figure I'm on to something good!

Cowboys & Aliens was a lot of fun if you don't overanalyze it.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Aug 5, 2011 -> 12:00 AM) Did the mention on ESPN get us more members? I hope so, because the 4-game sweep by the Focking Yankees sure didn't send anybody this way. I think I am more depressed right now than I have been all year about the sleepwalking 2011 team. I wish I cared about football enough to have something to look forward to.

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 08:33 PM) Tried out a mai tai with Appleton 12 and ED12. This one is definitely sweet. Nice brown sugar flavor with the fruitiness of the Appleton. To me, however, this lacks the depth and intrigue of a contrasting rum. I find the ED to be complementary. That's not to say that this is bad. It is certainly delicious. But it isn't as complex as other combinations. I don't know why I never tried mai tai combos before. This is fun. Yes, it is very fun, and it makes for near limitless drink options. I have done the Appleton 12/ED 12 mai tai combo, and iirc, I didn't like it as well as a combo with either ED 5 or my all-time fave ED 15. In general, if I don't include Martinique rhum in the combo I will at least get some of that agricole funk in play by using Clement Creole Shrubb instead of curacao. All this mai tai talk makes me very sad, because my last orgeat batch never fully recovered from my mishaps. Tasty but no viscosity to it and it just doesn't pull a mai tai together. I am resisting the call of the bottle of Fee's commercial orgeat gathering dust on the shelf because I know it will just let me down.

I am a lifelong fan of the Apes franchise, so I am certainly looking forward to the new one. I do wish Burton's turn at the franchise had produced a more memorable film, but such is life.

QUOTE (G&T @ Jul 31, 2011 -> 05:24 PM) Speaking of orgeat, I just mixed up a mai tai using Appleton 12 and Wray overproof. Stellar. I know Jim mentioned using Wray before with VX, but I feel the fruit complexity of the mai tai is captured in the 12 year and, well, if you have it, drink it! This baby is smooth as hell. The fruit and almond come forward here in a very clean drink. The Wray provides a nice viscosity. This is all sorts of dangerous. I haven't made a lot of variations of the mai tai, but I plan on one with demerara. Yeah, I'm sure that is a really good combo. In trying to not completely take over the kitchen cabinets and face the wife's wrath, I have not been keeping Appleton 12 on hand in order to free up a spot for a bottle of Smith & Cross. I dearly miss it, though, especially the way it works so well in so many Mai Tai combinations.

QUOTE (G&T @ Jul 31, 2011 -> 03:58 PM) I follow the very simple Kaiser Penguin recipe (here). If the Penguin is right, then I'm just not sure why you would blanch the almonds then do 3 extractions. Leave the skins on and you will likely get the same flavor. But now, of course, I am thinking of trying the blanching and extracting just to find out. The last batch I did was based on the KP toasted orgeat recipe. Great flavor but too dark for some of the cocktails that I wanted to keep on the lighter side visually like the Japanese Cocktail. The triple extraction in Darcy's recipe is a bit of overkill I think, especially with the very fine grind I got with the Vitamix. I will likely forgo those steps nest time. The blanching and skinning was not nearly as arduous as I thought it would be. The skins pretty much came right off in one piece.

QUOTE (G&T @ Jul 31, 2011 -> 09:10 AM) Actually I meant that after 2 weeks without a drink I would have about anything to get a buzz going. But sure let's call it funk which segues nicely into... BELGIUM COMES TO COOPERSTOWN which I attended yesterday. Ithaca's Le Bleue stole the show with the most sour American beer I ever tasted. Lip puckering sour. The blueberry was essentially hidden by the mound of lemon and grass. Ommegangs offerings were also outstanding. Particulary the 11 by Volume (Fruit, orange, fresh cherry, chocolate and a touch of heat at 11%) and the Belgian Independence Day Ale which was brewed with white pepper. That would have been a great food beer. Very spicy but not blowing you pallette out. their Aphrodite was also a solid Brett beer. Unfortunately many beers were destroyed by the heat. Allagash and South Hampton in particular did not travel well. Brooklyn's Local 1 was a honey forward mess. Overall though, a pretty cool day and it was gorgeous out in central New York. That would have been a great event! Too bad some of the beers on offer were not at their best. I'm tweaking a new batch of orgeat that I made largely following Darcy O'Neil's recipe. I regret using heat for the final two almond oil extractions because I think I overheated and curdled the almond milk a bit. I tried stirring those fat solids back into solution when I added the sugar but on cooling they reemerged to make the orgeat a bit grainy even with serious shaking. I resorted to straining out the solids and I now have a very good tasting almond flavor, but with most of the oils stripped away it just doesn't have the viscosity and mouthfeel I was looking for. I may have to call this a batch of very sweet almond milk and redo this one sooner than later. I added orange flower water and rose water sparingly (1 tsp. and 1/2 tsp., respectively), and also added 1/2 tsp. of almond extract to get some bitter almond zip to go with the soft sweet almond from the blanched fresh almonds. I like the flavor profile a lot, and just wish it had the body I was shooting for.

I went out with my family and about 40 other people last night on a late night bioluminescent kayak trip in northern Indian River Lagoon estuary system and it was spectacular. We had a great bloom of bioluminescent dinoflagellates that glowed bright green with every oar or hand that agitated the water, and we also had a spectacularly clear night sky filled with summer constellations and even a couple of really good shooting stars. It may be worth the hour drive to get back up that way for the Perseid shower in a couple of weeks if the sky is clear that night.

QUOTE (G&T @ Jul 28, 2011 -> 08:59 PM) Back off the wagon after 2 weeks sober. Whipped up a Spindrift subbing in Mount Gay for a Puerto Rican. I like how it turn out actually. I have done it with a light jamaican in place of the Puerto Rican before and it was a touch sweet. This is nicely balanced though a touch spicy. Of course, I'd basically drink turpentine at this point...I have a problem. The Wagon was way too full with you on it. 'Bout time you jumped off. Outstanding PR rums to use whenever one is called for include Ron Del Barrilito (2 Star for general mixing and 3 star for añejo mixing) and (believe it or not ) Bacardi 8. As far as your ability to "drink turpentine". . . I'm guessing it is more a new-found appreciation for high hogo funky rums — some of which taste like turpentine in the best possible way.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jul 25, 2011 -> 09:32 AM) I finally watched A history of Violence over the weekend. Not bad although I expected more out of it given the rave reviews my friends had given it. Also tried watching The Man From Earth based on qwerty's suggestion. Was totally getting into it and Netflix streaming cut it off at the 26 minute mark. When I went back to the description page it shows up as a 26 minute long film which is wrong. IMDB shows it as 1 hr 27 minutes. WTF!! Now I have to go find it somewhere since I got rid of the DVD plan with them. I watched it a couple months ago, also based on qwerty's post. I ran into the same NetFlix streaming glitch at the same point in the film and had to work a while to place the playhead a bit past the apparent corruption. There was about 1 minute of the film I couldn't access. I enjoyed the film and think it's good as long as you are willing to suspend an amazing amount of disbelief regarding all of the things the protagonist claims to have done, all the events he was at, and all the lives he led in his 14k years on Earth.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jul 21, 2011 -> 11:23 AM) Anything that gets Mary Elizabeth Winstead on screen is ok with me. She's gonna die. . . .

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 21, 2011 -> 09:34 AM) the thing is a prequel to the original. im pretty sure one of the characters is supposed to be kurt russells characters brother(edit: nevermind, they wrote that out). this movie is supposed to explain how the creature showed up on their doorstep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(2011_film) Making that prequel makes sense, and the film should be able to pack a lot of scares into it, but. . . EVERYBODY AT THE FIRST COMPOUND DIES, so it's not like there is going to be a whole lot of suspense regarding the outcome. I think I would rather have had them pick up from the end of the Carpenter film. The last thing you see is THINGdog alive and well and heading off to (we assume) ravage civilization. That would have been the better choice imo.

QUOTE (FlySox87 @ Jul 20, 2011 -> 10:17 PM) I believe in the Christian afterlife. I don't have proof. It's just faith. But it's my faith. Which is exactly why I don't care if you share my beliefs or not. It's a personal matter. On sort of a tangent here, I want to bring up something in my life recently that fully illustrates my disgust for intolerant, evangelical beliefs... My girlfriend (Jenn) was born to 16 year old girl and 17 year old boy who immediately gave her up for adoption. Her adoptive family was loving, caring and passed good, Christian values on to Jenn. Yet she maintained a somewhat close relationship with her birth mother, Rosie (her birth father is a non factor). As time went on, Rosie got married and gave Jenn several half-siblings with whom she is very close. And Rosie became a fanatical Christian. She attends one of those creepy non-denominational churches that holds sermons in a huge auditorium with enormous projection screens and big-screen TVs, and where the people sway back and forth while singing hymns (I'm a conservative Christian, but this and GodTV gives me the creeps). She posts three or four evangelical Facebook statuses a day, condemning everything under the sun it seems. She sees the devil in everything from Obama bumper stickers (crappy politician, not Satan) to Harry Potter movies (goofy kids movies I don't plan on watching, not Satanic works). But hey, maybe there's still a good person under all this nuttiness, right? Well...no. Jenn tells me how Rosie's husband got a big raise a few years back, but instead of putting the extra money into a fund for her children's college educations, she uses it to buy new clothes for herself pretty much every weekend. She thinks the idea of doing aid work, here or abroad, without mentioning God is a denial of God and an acceptance of Satan. Yes, if I went to Mozambique and built a hospital for orphans with AIDS and didn't cram Bibles down their throats, I'd be doing the devil's work. And of course, Rosie judges and condemns everyone who doesn't follow her beliefs. Oddly, she loves Israel as much as I do. Sometimes, I wonder if she knows they're Jewish. So here's the kicker. Years before we met, Jenn went to study abroad in New Zealand. She met and started dating an Indian Hindu man (who, from all accounts, is a terrific human being). They dated for several years, and when she found out, Rosie told Jenn that she wouldn't have anything to do with a daughter that would dare date a Satan worshipper. Jenn and her ex eventually parted ways, but Jenn and Rosie still didn't talk on the phone for years. Their only contact was a few very tense facebook and text messages. This communication heated up, and finally, after being challenged, Rosie called Jenn yesterday. It didn't go well. Rosie said that Jenn (a good, loving, and tolerant Christian if I've ever met one), doomed herself to Hell when she started "traveling the world and enjoying the company of Satan worshippers years ago". She said that she could no longer allow Jenn to act as if she were a Christian. Jenn told her to just forget about her, and being a total hypocrite, Rosie asked, "oh, you would just abandon your mother?" And rightfully so, Jenn pointed out that just popping her out of her womb doesn't make her (Rosie) her mother. They hung up, and Jenn spent most of today in the hospital due to a digestive issue she has. But Rosie harassed her via text all day, claiming she would have raised Jenn better than to be so "malevolent and selfish". I can't stand this. It makes me piss blood. I'm going to have the honor of being Jenn's date to her sister's wedding in November, where I'll meet Rosie for the first (and hopefully last) time. I've never been this excited about using my mouth to s*** all over a conservative, Christian person. I just want to know...how are being intolerant, abandoning one's offspring and harboring an intense hatred for the world God created the actions of a true Christian? How does she not realize this? What the f*** kind of person is she? I also despise Rosie because she is a complete embarassment to my conservative Christian beliefs. Literally. I am so convinced in my far right wing beliefs, and then I see someone like Rosie, I'm just incredulous about the fact that she even partially agrees with me. s***, I'd rather get caught agreeing with BigSqwert (). It's just embarassing having her on my general side. Ugh. /rant And when the f*** did Chris Getz decide he can play baseball? That is a totally screwed up situation, and I have the utmost sympathy for your girlfriend. Too bad you have to meet that whackjob at all. That said, for the non-religious among us, this is just the most extreme flavor of crazy and every other brand of religion that lies to the more sane side of that is still just a paler shade of crazy.