Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

[dibl]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Even though I've made probably 200 gal. of wine over many years, I've never brewed beer. My son in-law made some really tasty dark beer last spring. The only beer I care to drink is the strong dark variety, like Killian Red or O'Douls.

I wouldn't mind trying my hand at distilling some sour mash whiskey, but the investment in equipment is a bit daunting.

[Qqmike]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Boy, I just don't get it. Do I ever feel left out ... I'd make a p*-poor snob, I'm afraid, though at times in my life, I did make an effort to snob up a bit. My brother once told me I did everything backwards: At a young age doing things people do when they get older; at an older age doing things people take care of when young.

On topic now (snobbery) ... I got a jump start on a lot of this nonsense. My college roommate was French-British dual citizenship AND came from an upper-class French family. So at age 18, in addition to the German jump start I got from dad on HIS cheese, condiments, sausages and such, thanks to Pierre I started out as a routine matter of course with things like Brie, Camembert, Medoc, Beaujolais (and all that French Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée business), Dubonnet, Courvoisier, special coffees, French cooking, on and on.

I have made wine; I have known Napa Valley wine distributors. I thought my homemade (red) wine was too dry (read: bitter/sour), but Pierre was happy with it, saying it was typical of the affordable table wines many French families keep stocked for daily use. And I did the snob-wine-tasting-instructional thing with my "professional"-wine friend from Napa Valley. As for beers, I'm sure I've done my fair share of bragging-rights sampling.

And the fact is, I don't get it! I don't do snob appeal very well. For the life of me, I see nothing at all wrong with inexpensive Carlo Rossi wines (Paisano being in my perpetual inventory), or Gallo wines (remember the history of the 70-80's? something about Gallo using French grapes and all that ...); with Natural Light beer (a premium of the cheap-o's); and with coffees from Circle K (a local, bragging convenience store), Dunkin Donuts, or McDonalds. As for Starbucks, while I like some of the recent political statements from its CEO, I'm fed up with the snob traffic coming out of the drive-up near my local grocery, luxury SUVs who think (yes, the vehicles must be doing the thinking) the road was built exclusively for their use.

So as not to go on further embarrassing myself with my total lack of good taste , I assume you can pretty much figure out whatever else it is I might want to say, and so will end right here. I make a terrible snob. And my new Honda Civic (with Value Package no less) doesn't help that image.



" ... sour mash whiskey ..."? I happen to own a still from the Prohibition era ...

[oshunluvr]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

I agree with the idea that snobbishness - especially in regards to something as subjective as wine - is a waste of oxygen and time. However, I do not equate wine education as snobbishness. Just because I understand the difference between a Pinot Noir and a Merlot and what foods work best with both and which glass they should be served in does not make me a snob. Of course, if I scoff at you because you don't - then I'm a snob!

If you learn anything from decades of drinking wine and serving it too - it's that everyone's palates are different and what you like I my not and vise-versa. Plus, price isn't always an indicator of how good the wine is. One of our best Cab's was only $4 wholesale. But in a true proof of snobbishness, I couldn't get people to try it at $5 glass! Learning my first lesson in retail, I removed it from the wine list, waited a few months, put it back on at $9 a glass (still very cheap for a good Cab) - and it was all sold in weeks! Cab drinkers simply wouldn't believe any Cab at $5 could be good.

Interesting personal note: When my wife and I started getting "serious" about wine, our palates were quite different. Most obviously, we often preferred the same wine in different glasses. This has changed over the years, presumably because we've learned more about our own tastes. We now almost always have a shared opinion about a particular wine.

[Snowhog]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

I drink what I like, with the food I like. Simple.

[growlebear]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

I drink what I like, with the food I like. Simple.

+1

[woodsmoke]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

My my such wonderful comments.

I have a few personal experiences that have affected me greatly about wine.

a) My grandfather(an American Indian full blood) used to make ......get this....clover wine... imagine hand picking all that clover... lol.....and it tasted great....not a lot of it!
b) The wonderful woman who taught my undergrad micro introductory course actually has everybody in the class make...peach brandy!!! woah!!! couldn't do that nowadays.....and almost all of our brandies came out quite tasty.
c) Whilst in the Navy the fellow that I shared an apartment with agreed we would buy an appropriate temperature wine and and associated cheese each week to learn about wines. The merchant introduced our studies with a Rhine Castle that was room temperature and properly chilled to 47 deg F. He got a bottle "from the floor" and an identical bottle from the cooler and opened them right then and had us taste both, the floor bottle tasted like METAL NAILS.... eewww but the chilled bottle was a sweet as could be. Then he GAVE us both the bottles!
It need not be said that we were weekly customers!
d) Many have probably heard of "Champipple" which was Red Foxx's (Sanford and Son) combination of Ripple and cheap champagne. I have actually tried several versions of it, a couple at the apartment and one at the club and they came out...so so... LOL...problem is...Ripple is long gone from around here... These rich cowboys have ramped up the cost of wine a LOT!!

A news article I read says that our taste buds change SO MUCH over the years that the "real" reason that "older conisssourrries" like "dry/bloody" wines is that they can't taste sweet anymore so ....if they can't taste it then every body else is stooopid..

Don't know...but I still like a sweet wine.... a buddy a few decades ago said that I didn't have a mature palate....

let's see he smoked heavily.....at greasy Russian food all the time... okaaayyy

and Qqmike....you actually OWN a real antique still!!! how tres kewl is THAT!!

and yes...over the years I have decided that I like what I like and to heck with what people tell me to like.

woodsmoke

[Qqmike]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Snowhog: "I drink what I like, with the food I like. Simple."

I'll extend that to: I drink what I like, with a food I like, in a glass I like, whenever I like. Extremely simple (though I made it a bit more complex than did Snowhog ).

Yes, oshunluvr, I agree that wine, like any other endeavor, could make a wonderful hobby of study and fun and enterprise. In my experience, it is a rare person who can keep the knowledge to him/herself but must compulsively show it off in public or in private, and that's when it becomes (or comes off as) completely ridiculous when packaged as narcissistic conspicuous consumption punctuated by a dash of tunnel vision. I am reminded of a quote from Don Juan/Carlos Castaneda, the Yaqui sorcerer, "People become deadly serious about some nonsense that no one in his right mind should give a damn about." But in defense of the nuances of human behavior, most of us at one time or another exhibit completely ridiculous behaviors. My buddy the Napa wine distributor/sales rep certainly didn't flaunt it--you'd never know he was in the biz unless you asked him some specific question about it.


The bootleg still, yep, copper, thumper and all except the coil (which I misplaced but which is easily made from copper tubing). Fire marks are still on it. I never used it, but I knew a Cook Country deputy sheriff who did to make booze for other city officials at the time. It was such a paranoid atmosphere at the time that he'd make the buyer send his wife and one kid for the pick up.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Lol
I love the quote...i might just put it in my sig! lol

As to paranoia.... down here in the hills the shiners usta put their wares on the stump of a very big tree that had died that was inside the "crook" of a road with a large empty gallon mason jar into which the purchaser could put his money... of course there was a guy sitting in the woods just up the hill with a .30-.30 lever action just in case any deer, or other varmints, might appear.

The racking of that action can be heard a powerful long way!

Aaaahhhhhhhh days gone past....now it is the politically correct "hispanics" cooking meth and just killing anyone who stumbles on their operationS.

At least, although the shiners didn't pay the revenoo man..all the money eventually went back into the local economy! Now it goes to the cartels in Mexico....The U.S. has improved SOOO much in the last 50 years.

woodsmoke

woodsmoke

[ScottyK]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

This conservation has piqued my curiosity about wine making! Maybe there is a "Wine Making for dummies" book out there.

or a linux application that will show me.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

LOL I WAS....going to mention WINE but...well, Scotty was being serious so I'll shut my mouf! lol
woodsmoke

[Detonate]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

The quickest and easiest to make home made wine is "Purple Passion". One quart of Welches Grape Juice mixed with a cup of Everclear.

[dibl]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Maybe there is a "Wine Making for dummies" book out there.

Actually, yes there is: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Winemakin...6617355&sr=8-7

This looks like a better one: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Winemakin...617355&sr=8-11

But wine basically makes itself. Many years ago I made wines from fruit that I was able to get my hands on -- mulberries, peaches, bananas, and apples, not to mention concord grapes that I picked. You can make wine from tap water with sugar in it, if you want to stretch the definition of "wine".

The keys to success, in my experience, are:

- cleanliness -- use clean fermentation glassware and a clean airlock and clean tubing, racking cane, stir-stick, not to mention bottles and corks.

- don't over-handle it. In recent years I have used only a single racking, after about 6 weeks of primary fermentation. The books all tell you to use at least 2 rackings, but if you let it clear for a long while after the second racking (4/5 months) and then are careful with your siphoning process while bottling, just let the back yard have the last half-inch on the bottom. And yes, the whites may never clear, until they're in the bottle -- they can be very stubborn that way. You can get a filter pump if it's that important to you, but I don't worry about it.

I've never had the luxury of an oak cask for aging, and the oak chips seemed to induce filmy bacterial infections when I tried that approach, so my wine doesn't have that oaky finish that is so desirable with the reds.

I'm not into the "snob appeal" thing -- if, regardless of what someone has said about it, you don't enjoy the glass of wine that you have in your hand, dump it down the sink and try something else. Life is too short to drink bad wine.

@Qqmike, that is so cool that you have an old still -- I'm envious. I've seen them on the web for sale, but (just like the winemaking thing) it starts to sound more like "work" than a lazy retired guy wants in his life.

[Detonate]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

When making beer, and I am sure the same is true for wine, I have found it is best to use bottled water instead of tap water. Tap water has chlorine in it which I think inhibits the yeast.

[dibl]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Tap water has chlorine in it which I think inhibits the yeast.

Very true. With fresh refrigerated juice, there's no need to add water, so it's a non-issue in that situation. If water is needed, then distilled water is best. However, if you put tap water into a carboy, and leave the top open (in a clean area, out of the sun), and let it sit for a day or two or three, the chlorine will gradually come out in the form of gas, and the water will then be OK to use.

[erchie]

Re: Gouda on a Red Truck and a Sherlock Holmes demise of cheese snobbery

Boy, these stories sure take me back-- to 1968.

I was living in Pacific Beach, San Diego, and sailing as Third Mate with American President Lines out of San Pedro and San Francisco to the Far East and around the world. I had two yachting buddies-- both from Great Britain, both metallurgists working for the space industry-- and they taught me how to brew beer. They said they'd never, ever had a bottle explode, and they showed me their secret: they always waited until all the foam scum had disappeared from the brew in the crock and virtually all of the bubbles had quit rising to the surface-- one was supposed to look carefully with a flashlight shining into the brew, and be absolutely certain the rising bubbles were almost gone. That was the point at which one was to syphon the brew into heat-sterilized (in the dishwasher) quart bottles, filling them to within 3/4" of the top, then add 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to the bottle, to reactivate the fermentation, capping immediately after adding the sugar.

I had a 5.5 gallon crock, which produced 20 quarts of beer, and I followed their directions to a T. As soon as one batch was bottled, I'd cart the newly-capped 20 quarts out to my detached garage, and line them up on a high shelf in the cool darkness just under the eaves, and wash the crock to start another batch immediately. One batch took about 4-5 days, depending on the temperature. During my 2-month leave from the ship, I would bottle and lay up 100 quarts, and then go back to sea, leaving them undisturbed for about 4 to 6 months, during my next voyage. When I returned to port, I'd invite my two Brit friends and their wives over for a roast beef dinner with Yorkshire pudding, and we'd open the first 4 or 5 quarts of the ale. After decanting, it poured out a deep clear red, with no residual yeast in suspension, and a thick head that would make a spoon stand up. That stuff would knock your socks off! My two friends called it 'knicker dropper's glory'.

I had a square plastic bucket with a divider partition which I used to carry 6 quarts without too much shaking to the yacht club where I kept my boat, and when I started down the ramp to the boatslips, my 2 German friends in the club -- live-aboard sailors-- would make a beeline to my boat to share it, smacking their lips. It was great stuff!

Mike and Brian, my two Brit friends, helped me drink the remainder of the 100 bottles, until I went back to sea, leaving another batch of 100 quarts aging in the garage.

Sadly, I no longer brew my own beer-- I now drink bottled Guinness, which is good enough stuff-- but not as good as the Guinness on tap in the UK-- and single malt scotch. My favorites are the Glenmorangie, the Bowmore, the Lagavulin and the Laphroig-- all from Islay. The Glenmorangie is the 'sweetest'-- if scotch can be called sweet, and the others are progressively more smokey peat tasting-- the Laphroig being the most peat-ty. Lovely stuff! A blue Stilton cheese is great with the scotch-- I keep it in the fridge for two or three months after I buy it so it can get bluer-- veined with 'penicillin'-- before I eat it.

When it comes to wine, I like a good Pinot Grigiot, Riesling, or Liebfraumilch occasionally, but I drink more of the reds, like merlot-cabernet (most frequently), or, for a cheap, but delightfully good red, 'The 7 Zinns'. I always have a magnum of Columbia Crest Two Vines Merlot-Cabernet on my kitchen counter. I not only drink it, I cook with it as well-- it makes a super finisher in the pot for spaghetti sauce from scratch, and it's great in the glass. Columbia Crest merlot-cabernet is almost identical in taste to the imported Baron Phillipe de Rothschild Mouton Cadet, but it is almost half the cost of BPdRMC. 750ml of CCMC is only $7 against $11 for BPdRMC. And to me they taste almost identical.

One of my first friends in San Diego when I moved there in 1967 was Viktor, a Russian mathematician from Vladivostok, who introduced me to the 12-bit PDP-8, made by Digital Electronics Corp, when we were sailing together on a Scripps Institution oceanographic ship. He and I took our wives camping in Baja in an abandoned orchard near Sal Si Puedes, high on a 100-foot cliff overlooking the Pacific. We bought abalones and langostas from local fisherman on the beach below the cliff and made paella over a campfire, drinking Red Mountain wine, which was literally 98 cents a gallon. We drank it from a 'porron' which is the glass version of a 'bota' (wine skin), pouring the stream into our mouths from as far away as we could hold the 'porron'-- which resulted in a large number of red T-shirts that had previously been white.

Glorious days!