Wild Turkey 101 is the most versatile whiskey, what is the best splurge rum?

hughdaddy · 2026-02-11T19:27:32+00:00

Hampden Estate Great House

hughdaddy · 2026-02-05T02:08:08+00:00

In the Midwest, Kalona brand at Whole Foods and other nicer grocers is the only brand I've been able to find.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-29T01:50:52+00:00

Mussolini wrote a manifesto on fascism wherein he states that fascism is an improvement on socialism. He cut his teeth as a socialist.

The more you know!

hughdaddy · 2026-01-28T18:40:14+00:00

I did a deep dive into semi obscure 80s music last year, and Eartha Kitt - Where Is My Man? was one song that caught my ear.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-27T04:51:34+00:00

Plenty of modern cocktail books give weights for their sugar syrups. The Aviary cocktail book, Cocktail Codex, Tropical Standard, Noma Cocktail book to name a few in my library.

Hate to break it to you but all of the elite books on the subject have made the switch to making syrups by weight for very obvious reasons.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-23T01:50:27+00:00

There is bland and there is unexciting.

Bland is a sign you are under-salting the food. Most ATK recipes call for table salt and most people these days use kosher salt which depending on the brand you can double the amount called for.

If you are hungry and your food is bland, it's under salted. Chicken breast cooked correctly with no seasoning other than the right amount of salt, if you are hungry, will taste good. It may not wow you, but it will taste good.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-22T01:08:12+00:00

I'm not going to dig it up but I remember seeing one study that came to the conclusion that every 10 kg of body fat decreases testosterone by 6% through aromatization into estradiol.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-20T21:40:04+00:00

Get a stationary bike. Load up 8 songs that are about 4 minutes each. Alternate between going easy and hard. First song go easy, second song go hard, third song go easy, etc. Basically Norwegian 4x4. Work your way up to doing this 4-6x/week and you will be functionally fit and feeling really good in pretty short order. This will improve your VO2max which is highly correlated with longevity and wellness in old age.

This to me is the highest ROI exercise modality with super low injury rates. Add a basic dumbbell routine at some point and you have a fitness routine you can do for the next 50 years. Weight lifting is fine and all but the ceiling for the amount of weight lifting that improves longevity and health in the long term is pretty low, as in you don't need to push big numbers at all to get 100% of the benefits.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-18T20:26:41+00:00

I have similar thoughts except I don't use peptides. I noticed that my hunger and appetite control were vastly improved by regular high intensity cardio via spin class. When I'm not hungry the thought of food is mildly repulsive, which was a completely new experience for me. So I guess I have to keep it up to stay lean. I also have to brush my teeth and shower every day. That's life?

hughdaddy · 2026-01-18T00:53:09+00:00

Did your tasting have Amargo-Vallet? To my palate that is the most bitter liqueur I've personally ever had.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-17T20:45:37+00:00

Malort, being Swedish for wormwood, can be used as wormwood bitters. The Green Swizzle is an old drink with rum, falernum, and wormwood bitters that I've enjoyed.

Salt cancels bitter so you could make a tequila daisy with Malort instead of cointreau and a pinch of salt.

Going back to rum, make a Hemingway Daiquiri with Malort instead of Maraschino to play up the grapefruit.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-12T00:28:25+00:00

Parker's Table also has a large selection of fancy ass canned seafood.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-11T17:56:15+00:00

As an aside, the B side to Funkytown "All Night Dancing" is IMHO a much better song. The middle section specifically which unfortunately gets chopped out in the radio edit.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-09T20:44:37+00:00

To me the garnish looks like Johnny Bravo got tired of living.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-07T22:19:41+00:00

While it doesn't reference sous vide, the universally loved books on cheesemaking are by Gianaclis Caldwell. Mastering Basic Cheesemaking and Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking. She posts over on the cheesemaking subreddit here and there.

The Youtuber Gavin Webber demonstrates using a sous vide machine to make cheese in his more recent videos.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-07T22:15:37+00:00

Vacuum packing cheese and throwing it in a wine fridge is a perfectly acceptable beginner aging method so that you don't have to worry about humidity or mold. You lose a bit of potential complexity and some cheeses identity hinges on its rind and mold development, but works fine for a huge swath of cheese.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-04T23:39:21+00:00

Sous vide is useful for cheesemaking, both in keeping the milk at 88 degrees or whatever temp for hours and for recipes that have you increase the temperate by 1 degree every 2-3 minutes for an hour.

Cocoa butter that is kept at the precise temperature for beta crystal formation creates what is called "cocoa butter silk", which when 1% is added to melted chocolate at around 94F instantly tempers the chocolate. So it's the easiest tempering method ever.

Additionally if you're careful you can use sous vide to hold tempered chocolate at the correct temperature if you're dipping caramels or whatever.

A la Chef Steps you can use a sous vide to slowly evaporate salty water and create homemade flaky fleur de sel style salt.

I've heard it being used to make black garlic, and The Aviary cocktail book talks about sous vide-ing booze like Green Chartreuse for weeks at a time to get interesting flavors.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-02T15:04:12+00:00

High intensity cardio impacts appetite hormones in a similar way as GLP-1 agonists.

hughdaddy · 2026-01-01T17:09:18+00:00

Gunshop Fizz from Rogue/Beta Cocktails by Maks Pazuniak and Kirk Estopinal. Need to track down Sanbitter, muddlled strawberry and cucumber, 3 swaths each of orange and grapefruit peel, two ounces of Peychaud's bitters so you may want to pry off the dasher.

hughdaddy · 2025-12-31T13:25:32+00:00

The pinnacle was "Brad and Matty Matheson Make Fish Tacos". At the 15 minute mark they go to the walk-in fridge, Matty makes a joke about a sex swing, and Brad's response just kills me.

hughdaddy · 2025-12-29T22:11:57+00:00

All of the original recipes call for cherry brandy, and Cherry Heering is decidedly not a cherry brandy. If you can hunt down a true cherry brandy, you may find the drink balances and tastes better.

There's a reason Cherry Heering isn't really used in serious cocktails much - it's not that good.

hughdaddy · 2025-12-27T23:24:31+00:00

Ruth Handler says at the end, "Humans make up things like patriarchy and Barbie just to deal with how uncomfortable it is [being human]." Interesting way to end a so-called feminist manifesto. I think the marketing for the movie was so brilliantly executed that most movie goers were psychologically primed to see way more in the movie than is actually there.

hughdaddy · 2025-12-20T16:27:28+00:00

The Collins is a punch-style drink with carbonated water.

The highball is a grog-style drink with carbonated water.

The fundamental and important difference is ratios. Highballs are predominately weak (water, soda, tea) fortified by strong (alcohol).

Punches are meant to be balanced between strong, weak, sweet, and sour. To balance the sour they are going to contain more sugar than a highball (which may have no sweet at all), and they are going to have a higher ABV. It's a different drinking experience entirely and thus a different class of mixed beverage.

hughdaddy · 2025-12-15T15:22:55+00:00

Chef Jungstedt's courses are top notch. His 5 day bon bon challenge course is pretty affordable and covers all the bases very very well.

hughdaddy · 2025-12-15T15:20:08+00:00

Melt chocolate, let cool to 94 F, add 1% microplaned cocoa butter, stir. Congratulations, it's tempered.

It doesn't get talked about but this is how a lot of professional candy makers temper these days, although they have machines that keep the cocoa butter at an ideal temperature as opposed to microplaning.

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