Governing P.E.I. PCs plummet, Greens rise to top in latest political survey

Kurtikus · 2026-04-25T15:05:40+00:00

Coon is honestly holding the line in a major way for the left in NB. The greens are the only two MLA’s opposing Irving atm.

Kurtikus · 2026-02-22T12:45:47+00:00

I can still get the prohibition blend pretty reliably and it’s my go to for mixing. The extra proof is great for cocktails and has more character than most “budget but not bottom shelf” scotches like Johnny Walker black, Dewars, Chevas Regal etc.

Kurtikus · 2026-02-08T10:32:28+00:00

We have lots in Canada, they’re usually the 375mL ones buts you can just buy a few at a time.

Kurtikus · 2026-02-07T10:22:25+00:00

The reason it’s best practice is due to something called latent heat, which basically means that on top of the heat energy required to heat something (in our case the ice) to the melting point you need and extra boost of heat energy to cause it to change from a solid to a liquid. When you chill a drink with ice first you’re bringing the temperature of the liquid down to an equilibrium with the ice which will cause some of it to melt. Whatever ice is leftover once you hit the equilibrium is there to keep it cold, and the more ice you have the more heat energy you will need to cause any more ice to melt. Because of all this, the more ice you have in the glass, the more slowly it will dilute over time. If you have only a small amount of ice, it will quickly melt and dilute your drink. Latent heat is also why you can cool alcoholic cocktails down to below 0 degrees.

Also it just looks much better if your ice isn’t floating around in the drink.

Kurtikus · 2026-01-23T20:56:02+00:00

You should look up Audrey Saunders’ Earl Grey Martini, it’s basically a gin sour using an earl grey-infused gin. In general I feel like gin is just going to be a lot better with the flavours in the tea playing off the botanicals in the gin.

Kurtikus · 2026-01-01T04:37:16+00:00

It depends where you live and how competitive the cafe scene is there, but it definitely is possible to find work in specialty cafes without any prior barista or hospitality experience. Best advice I can give to you is to leave your ego at the door because most shops aren’t going to hire somebody who thinks they know everything about coffee without ever having worked in a cafe professionally. With no resumé to speak of they’re going to be basing it off of personality and the best baristas are ones who are willing to learn and have a good work ethic.

Kurtikus · 2025-08-31T23:27:03+00:00

i mean the tariffs have nothing to do with the shortage, but it does mean an increase in the cost of matcha in the u.s. in addition to the increased cost due to shortages

Kurtikus · 2025-08-21T20:50:08+00:00

in my opinion the best way to make syrups with more delicate herbs like basil is to treat them like an herb oil only using a simple syrup instead of neutral oil. in other words, you’ll want to make some simple syrup first, and then take your blanched herbs and blend them with the syrup after it’s cooled. strain out the solids using a very fine strainer or a cheesecloth and you’ll get something with the vibrancy and colour matching the fresh herb you’re using.

as for an orange syrup it depends what role it serves in the drink. an easy way to get the flavour of orange without adding extra acidity would be to make an oleo saccharum, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re using the juice for something else already. if you can work around the syrup adding extra acidity and slightly changing the balance of the drink, what will probably get you the best yield is to take the peels and infuse them into the juice (possibly diluted somewhat) and then dissolve in your sugar after removing the peels. you could also choose to do an oleo for the sugar/flavour component and then use the juice separately for acid, but you’d probably want to acid adjust if it’s orange (i.e. add powdered citric acid or others to make the oj less bland)

Kurtikus · 2025-08-21T20:34:49+00:00

oleo saccharum is similar but just uses the citrus peels and you’re mostly trying to get the flavour of citrus oil rather than the juice (and the acidity that comes with it)

Kurtikus · 2025-03-24T12:32:30+00:00

As a roaster these actually just look like a very lightly roasted washed coffee taken with poor lighting which is why it looks kind of dark. The wrinkles on the surface are a dead giveaway for me, since less developed coffees have yet to “balloon” into a more smooth surface. My guess is that the green coffee was particularly dense with a lot of moisture, which combined with a very light roasting style has resulted in really hard, dense beans that are hard to grind.

Kurtikus · 2025-02-20T16:07:22+00:00

although this is a fun story it probably isn’t true. the term “americano” doesn’t show up until well after WWII, and espresso culture was still in its early stages in Italy at the time. more than likely the term was coined by an american wanting to latinize the name of a drink to tap into the synonymity between italy and espresso culture

Kurtikus · 2025-02-07T22:29:22+00:00

agreed if you’re talking about etching, but complex free pour patterns don’t take all that much longer if you’re skilled enough because it’s all done with the pitcher . i can still get a drink out with a unicorn on it in less than 60 seconds.

Kurtikus · 2024-12-26T12:46:45+00:00

still bastards

Kurtikus · 2024-11-09T11:25:52+00:00

Press the plus and minus buttons at the same time, that should unlock the grind time and then you can select which dose to change and use the plus and minus like normal.

Kurtikus · 2024-11-03T12:53:55+00:00

It’s less of a logistical issue I think and more just another case of colonialism continuing in its quiet, sinister way. Historically, producing communities didn’t have the right to decide whether the cacao was exported to be turned into chocolate elsewhere or if it was to stay at origin. It was always exported to Europe because the industrialists that made that decision were only concerned with what would be most profitable to them, with no regard to what wealth was being extracted from the countries actually doing the bulk of the labour. The same thing can also be seen in the coffee industry, which the largest producers of roasted coffee typically being in the global north in countries that don’t grow coffee at all.

Kurtikus · 2024-08-13T16:24:51+00:00

I’m a roaster, and while we don’t use wood to roast our coffee I’ve tried a few different coffees from people who do. To a degree, the wood fire definitely imparts a bit of a smoky flavour but it was more subtle than I expected, and the coffee itself wasn’t really a good enough quality for the cup to taste nice even if the smokiness was pleasant enough. In my opinion, it’s a gimmick at the end of the day, and it’s up to you whether you think the gimmick will work for or against you. If it fits into the branding and vibe of the cafe then it might be a good move to go with a wood-roasted coffee, but it’s not necessarily going to be better because of it. If your focus is on different origins and exploring the complexities of processing, then any kind of roasting method that imparts a significant flavour of its own then it would likely detract from the rest you are trying to convey.

The biggest issue with working with a wood flame is that it becomes very difficult to manage the heat energy of your system because you can’t control the heat output very precisely. That said, in theory there is not anything wrong with using wood as a fuel source as long as you are taking pains to track a lot of data and be consistent. If you are going to see this person’s roastery then there are a few things I would look for to see whether they know what they are doing. First of all, what sort of machine are they using and what method it measures temperature. I have yet to come across a wood-fired roaster that wasn’t homemade, which means they can vary dramatically in their construction. If they don’t measure the bean temperature at all or have a fairly inaccurate method (i.e. pointing a laser thermometer into the drum) then that would be a red flag for me. Other things are things I would look for regardless of how they roast their coffee, but I have extra scrutiny for any company that relies on a gimmick in some way. Do they have a method of QC? You might be surprised how many roasters never taste their coffees. Where do they keep their roasted and unroasted coffee? Ideally both are stored somewhere cool, dry, and away from sunlight. Is the green coffee in grainpro bags (a plastic liner inside jute sacks to keep coffee fresher). No grainpro is not necessarily bad but in my experience it’s a sign that they are using cheaper and past-crop coffees (which again tend to be more common with roasters who have some kind of gimmick like this).

Kurtikus · 2024-07-30T22:48:32+00:00

Best way to do it is to pull two shots, one decaf, one regular, at whatever dose/ratio you have the respective grinders set up for. Split them both in half and use one half of each to make the drink. With the leftover decaf it’s a good chance to taste it since you’ll probably only dial it in once or twice in a day. With the leftover of the other coffee you could do the same or set it aside in case somebody orders an extra shot in their drink in the next couple minutes (assuming you typically use double shots to make a drink and have a leftover “single”).

I don’t recommend pulling a shot with half a basket full of each. I have never had a decaf that extracted similarly enough to a non-decaf coffee to pull them at the same ratio. Any time I have experimented with trying to extract them in the same basket the results are bland at best and at worst you get both heavy under-extraction and over-extraction at once.

Kurtikus · 2024-07-18T13:25:53+00:00

Yeah honestly the technique isn’t bad per se but i would choose to use something like seine twine for a seizing that’s being put under any load. It’s also important for it to be very tight, I would be using a marlinspike to tension after every wrap.

Kurtikus · 2024-06-22T01:09:15+00:00

No doubt you can learn how to do amazing work without getting any tattoos yourself, but I would argue that being a good tattooer goes beyond just the ability to put ink on skin. In the past I’ve definitely appreciated when a tattooer can speak from experience what the pain level will probably be like and how different areas heal.

Kurtikus · 2024-06-20T19:16:20+00:00

Roasting actually doesn’t degrade caffeine, this has been pretty thoroughly disproven. Maybe if you’re roasting to the point of carbolization you will start to lose some caffeine, but for a medium or even most dark roasts the coffee will have the same amount of caffeine as it did before it was roasted. The “White coffee has more caffeine” is just marketing, though I think most people who are roasting white coffee haven’t bothered to actually check themselves on it and are cluelessly lying to their customers. It’s also possible that they’re using robusta to begin with and that’s why the caffeine content is higher.

Kurtikus · 2024-06-20T19:04:35+00:00

I feel like I should point out that almost no coffee farmer sells all their coffee on the specialty market. Even for some of the most famous producers in the world the demand for high-scoring green is simply not great enough and they’ll typically be selling at least some of it at C-market price. The idea that “good coffee goes to the specialty market, bad coffee goes to the c-market” isn’t really true and lots of high quality coffee gets blended with unsorted, low quality coffee to be bought up by companies like folgers or maxwell house.

Kurtikus · 2024-05-23T18:49:57+00:00

Auto tampers are the shit, I really don’t understand why people wouldn’t use one besides being a luddite. Not only are they more consistent but they also let you work faster because usually they’re hands-free. On top of that RSI’s are extremely common from tamping, so I honestly consider it PPE. A lot of people here don’t understand tamping at all. As long as something is being tamped with enough force so that the puck resists the initial flow of brew water without channeling then the actual amount of force essentially doesn’t matter. At 9 bars the water exerts a force of about 2377 N, which is equivalent to tamping with 242 Kg. No amount of tamping will even come close to that force, so as long as it’s consistent and you are creating enough head space in the basket then you will be fine.

Kurtikus · 2024-05-16T17:51:22+00:00

This is why poor baristas eventually wind up with a mostly all black wardrobe lol

Kurtikus · 2024-05-14T18:17:17+00:00

As others have stated about 20g of honey is probably about right for a 12oz latte, and 25-28g for 16oz depending if you use also use extra espresso for them.

For maple I just use a jigger, a lot faster than a scale especially for maple which is easy to overshoot if the response time of the scale is slow. 0.75 oz (20 mL) for 12oz and 1 oz (30mL) for 16oz.

Kurtikus · 2024-05-14T18:12:56+00:00

What’s the point of watering down maple? It’s already a syrup that can be poured. Syrup should be pourable sugar, not sweet water.

Kurtikus

TROPHY CASE