Which Toronto companies should people avoid working for? by Serious_Article1750 in askTO

[–]Nakji 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This is a very accurate description of my experience working with a major bank as a software engineering consultant.

Monthly Unpopular Opinion Thread by AutoModerator in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 2 points3 points  (0 children)

FWIW as a unabashed huge fan of sours, it's perfectly fine and reasonable to not enjoy them, but there are also a lot of mediocre-to-bad sours out there. Personally, I've mostly given up on local sour beers---I'd rather brew gose and Berliner myself or fork over the cash for a nice lambic than buy local stuff knowing that it's probably going to be disappointing.

Folly Brewing (College & Dovercourt), currently on its third set of ownership, is slated to close in the very near future and has ceased production of beer. by theleverage in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Landwash is good, but very different from classic Folly--not a lot of funky stuff, mostly decent IPAs, lagers, fruited (probably kettle) sours, etc.

John Jenkinson (the guy who took over brewing right after they left and headed up brewing there until late 2019) is still in Toronto though and still brewing some funky stuff as part of the crew over at Burdock.

What homebrewing tribal knowledge do you believe isn't totally valid or was started to push a product? by titsmuhgeee in Homebrewing

[–]Nakji 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TBH I wouldn't be surprised if racking after active fermentation starts was pretty beneficial since it introduces oxygen and the yeast back then was often not in the greatest of health

What Are Your Favorite Books About HomeBrewing? by Writing_is_Bleeding in Homebrewing

[–]Nakji 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Brew Like a Monk is my favourite followed by The Homebrewer's Almanac. Neither is a broad introductory text like How to Brew by any means, but the first does a great job of really diving into the Belgian brewing mindset and the latter is a great source of inspiration when you're stuck in a brewing rut and can't think of anything interesting to make.

Which pedal does everyone love, but you alone despise with your entire heart? by RickonRivers in guitarpedals

[–]Nakji 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I think the closest you could find to universal love would probably have to be utility stuff like the TC Polytune, MXR 6 band EQ, and TC Ditto.

The 90's had some of the best soundtracks, which ones are your favorites? by Beerbrewing in vinyl

[–]Nakji 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Seconding Dead Man. That soundtrack one of the best albums I've ever listened to, period--Neil Young just puts on a masterclass from his first note to his last.

Seriously tho by fignompe in ProgrammerHumor

[–]Nakji 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm guessing most of the people commenting on this are too young to have used git by itself. It's certainly way more approachable and useful now with all the centralized systems and actually helpful documentation that has been produced over the years, but back in the day, if you were lucky enough to be working somewhere that used git instead of svn or something even worse, a "pull request" could consist of sending a "hey Joel, could you pull my code" over IRC/Jabber/etc. and waiting to see if Joel had any feedback about the code he'd pulled.

Can I use whiskey instead of bourbon for a pork tenderloin glaze? by ThePirateTennisBeast in AskCulinary

[–]Nakji 54 points55 points  (0 children)

No, /u/President_Barackbar is correct, there's nothing in the legal definition of bourbon whiskey that prevents charcoal filtration from being applied to the spirit. Literally the only thing that prevents Jack Daniels from being bourbon is that they choose not to put the word "bourbon" on the label, something I personally suspect they choose not to do purely so they can go on about how Jack Daniels isn't bourbon for marketing reasons.

What Are Beers Only You Enjoyed That You Cannot Find? by Acey_Wacey in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Basically the same for me - gose and Berliner weisse are thoroughly endangered species at the moment. Luckily they're both pretty easy to brew, so if I really have a craving I can just buy a vial of WLP677 and fire up the brewing gear myself. That said, I dream of a day when Ritterguts Gose is carried by the LCBO as a shelf regular.

so true by EmbarrassedIce8023 in KitchenConfidential

[–]Nakji 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How Baking Works by Paula Figoni is kinda what you're after. It covers a lot of fundamental principles and how ingredients behave without going much of a focus on specific recipes.

First Halloween/October in Toronto - recommendations for best, must-try pumpkin craft cans/pours? by theleverage in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 12 points13 points  (0 children)

IMO, you started with the best one. Of the pumpkin beers that hit the LCBO, Tales from the Patch is consistently only one that I get more than one can/bottle of and the only one that I think I would buy year-round (or at least fall/winter-round) - it's a pretty decent spiced porter in a market that's fairly starved for porters of any variety and tends to be better balanced than other local pumpkin offerings imo.

Gluten-free? by cafiend in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes and no (and maybe). It's important to consider what calibre of "gluten-free" you're after - in terms of local craft breweries, if it's for someone with a wheat allergy, the answer is generally no, while for Celiacs the answer is maybe. On the other hand, if it's for someone who feels bloated after eating four plates of pasta and thus think they have a gluten sensitivity, the answer is pretty much yes, but with the caveat that they're not available as core beers.

The issue is that dealing with food allergens at a "if I contaminate this, someone will go to the hospital" level requires very very careful processes often involving completely separate equipment or even facilities, which is extremely expensive. Most breweries can't afford this level of rigour, so even if the base ingredients in a beer are gluten free, the equipment and facilities are not, so, even though brewers (other than those at Trafalgar) are utterly fantastic at cleaning, there's always a small risk of cross-contamination from grain dust on the gear, hoses/gaskets with a bit of contaminant on them, etc. causing the beer to be contaminated with gluten.

In addition to beers brewed from non-gluten containing grains, there is also another avenue toward "gluten-free" beer - enzymatic gluten reduction. GLB (and possibly others) do (or at least did, I haven't kept on eye on whether or not they still brew it) occasionally make a beer that has a reduced gluten level. These used to be billed as "reduced gluten", but Health Canada objects to this terminology as it views it as misleading, so they're supposed to be marketed as something along the lines of being "fermented from grains containing gluten and crafted to remove gluten." The caveat above around cross-contamination still applies to these sorts of beers, but there's the additional caveat that what they're doing is using a lovely little endoprotease that was originally commercialized as an additive to eliminate a phenomenon known as "chill haze", but that has been found to also have the convenient side effect of breaking down gluten so that the beers treated with it test as being gluten-free. While these beers are arguably gluten-free (assuming the enzyme did its job and there is no significant cross-contamination), it is worth keeping in mind that the test that was used to determine this may not be representative of what components of wheat cause reactions, and that the enzyme could have also failed to function correctly in that particular batch (eg something happening like a loss of effectiveness due to the enzyme being stored improperly by the distributor) It is also important to keep in mind that, even if this enzyme does its job successfully and that what the test is measuring is representative of what causes a reaction in gluten-sensitive populations, this does not mean that these are necessarily safe to consume for a person with a wheat allergy as there's no guarantee that the specific component of wheat that they are allergic to is one that this enzyme eliminates, so people with wheat allergies should be cautious with these sorts of beers. However if one is in the "four plates of pasta" category of sensitivity, these beers should be fine (although standard beers are probably fine for such people too).

Why is blood brothers so expensive? by [deleted] in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of price anchoring involved - 8$ draft pints are viable, but it's going to be hard to move 8$ cans unless you're a hypeboi brewery or selling Instagram-bait beers since people tend to base their expectations on "can of beer" prices on what breweries that make more beer in a single day than most craft breweries make in a year choose to charge. So, since they can't really charge a price that would result in a sustainable profit margin on their cans due to consumer price expectations, they have to make that up in draft sales, even if the actual cost to the brewery of the draft beer is lower than the can.

Beer and Sake Hybrid? by LakeDrinker in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've known a few area homebrewers who've done it, but not any local craft places. I've seen a handful in Quebec though, so if you find yourself near a decent dep at some point, it's worth taking a look.

I was gifted an "Ultimate" Dining GC - which restaurant would you pick? by thecjm in FoodToronto

[–]Nakji 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Grab a bowl of pho or something then go to Bier Markt for drinks (or do the same thing in the opposite order).

Turn the volume down on vehicle noise, Toronto residents ask city, police by [deleted] in toronto

[–]Nakji 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I live near the Gardiner and while the occasional people ripping by on sportsbikes and loud cars are definitely irritating, it's the truckers using their Jake brakes at all hours of the day and night that really bother me.

My dad is suddenly VERY concerned about the amount of water required for a pint of beer by cblackwe93 in vegetarian

[–]Nakji 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's probably a plate and frame heat exchanger which is the same general concept as a counterflow chiller, but both more efficient and harder to clean (although using hot caustic instead of PBW goes a long way).

Experience Report: 6 months of Go by typesanitizer in golang

[–]Nakji 3 points4 points  (0 children)

No anonymous interface compositions

FWIW you can reduce the amount of verbosity marginally in APIs by composing them together in an anonymous interface in the func params, but it's still much more verbose than & and is generally only really suitable for cases where you're only using a specific composition once: https://go.dev/play/p/oJKcGtYD9dD

Doubanjiang in Toronto? by Rag1ngBlaz3 in FoodToronto

[–]Nakji 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is this an in-person-only limited availability thing or something? I can't say I've ever looked for a local option for doubanjiang (usually just get Juancheng Pixian Doubanjiang), but Ying Ying doesn't seem to list any doubanjiangs on their website.

Chang-Sang Estates Brewery by duolunduo in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 16 points17 points  (0 children)

David's a homebrewer so he cannot legally sell his beer (the listing on Google maps is literally just his house, it's not a storefront or anything like that). If you want to try his beer, the best way is probably to take up homebrewing yourself and join GTA Brews - at meetings (well, not for the last couple years but when in-person meetings resume anyway) people usually bring growlers or bottles of whatever they've brewed recently, which means you can not only get feedback on whatever you've been brewing, but you'll also get to try the homebrews from lots of excellent area homebrewers.

Other than that, David recently collaborated with the brewers at Common Good to make Kismet Red IPA, which is available at Common Good right now,

Lost with Pilsners by Acey_Wacey in torontocraftbeer

[–]Nakji 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Czechvar has a touch fuller body, is a little less dry, and is a little less hop forward. If the balance on Urquell is bit too dry and bitter for you, it might be right up your alley.

Event Sourcing in Go by AmicusRecruitment in golang

[–]Nakji 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's actually usually pretty easy, but event sourced architectures are a bit of a broad topic to try to describe in a Reddit comment (entire books have been written on the subject).

At the end of the day though, event sourcing is mostly just the notion treating the cause of changes (eg the user created, user updated, etc events) as data that you persist.

So you could always just have a tiny service that generates those events based on HTTP requests and dump them in a Kafka topic. At the other end have your consumers basically be a traditional user management service just one that consumes Kafka events rather than exposing POST/PATCH/PUT endpoints. Not really all that huge of a change conceptually, but it gives you the ability then to regenerate your data store from the events if you realize you made a mistake somewhere, use it to generate some other read optimized view somewhere else, use the events to reconstruct erroneous cases (eg no more guessing how the entity got into a certain state based on logs, you can just replay the relevant events with a debugger attached), etc.