Author: Steen

Steen is a nerdy biologist who spends a lot of time trying to cultivate Chloroflexi, who also likes to draw comics, play video games, and climb.

Cosmic Encounter

Sometime during our wanderings this weekend, Doc and I stumbled upon the most amazing garage sale ever. Amongst the many awesome things we found there, we got…

Check the awesome art

this awesome board game, Cosmic Encounter!

Cited as the progenitor of Magic: The Gathering (and many other games where the game-play changes every time you play it), it seemed too amazing to pass up. It also came with a bucket of expansion packs, but we thought it best to play the original game first before trying to comprehend the expansion packs.

I have enjoyed it thus far, but I have only played it with 2 and with 3 players. I imagine that it really starts getting good with 4 players, due to the ability to forge alliances with players, and team up against others.

You randomly draw one of a kabillion different wacky alien races (the original game only had 15 races, but the box we got has about 75 races), and that determines your alien power for the game.

Some aliens, like Void, have powers that seem frustratingly powerful; but if you have an alien like the Healer in play, then the Void really doesn’t seem so scary anymore. So I guess this really adds to the whole “a different game every time you play!” tagline.

So far, I like Guts of Glory better, but mostly because Guts seems more complex. Therefore, I will probably enjoy Cosmic Encounter more and more as we add more of the optional rules and expansion packs to it. I really love the old science fiction art by Dean Morrissey and the wacky vibe. I should also point out that Cosmic has more opportunities to be totally different each play than Guts has, due to all the different strategies that come with the different races.

To give you an idea of the sorts of issues that can arise during a play-through of Cosmic Encounter, I present to you this discussion on Void vs Zombie.

How to Make Pecan Liqueur

I have been on a liqueur-making rampage recently! They really allow you to make delicious craft cocktails that taste like you paid $16 for it in a bar. I’ve never really bought any bottles of liqueur, however, because: a) you seem to need to have, like, a million different liqueurs; and 2) they cost a lot. Instead, I’ve just been making one or two at a time, and focusing on making cocktails which feature those liqueurs until more are done.

This liqueur is my own personal recipe, that I came up with because it sounded like it would be good.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup pecans (roasted and finely chopped)

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup molasses

1/2 cup dark spiced rum

Method:

Mix all the ingredients together, and seal in a mason jar.

I like looking at the sedimentary layers that form whenever I make liqueurs.

Let the mixture macerate for 2 weeks, mixing the jar once a day.

After 2 weeks are up, filter the mixture. First use a coarse filter (such as a metal mesh) to remove the coarse pecan pieces.

Get those pecan pieces out of my liqueur!
Yea, that’s the stuff!

Then, use a coffee filter to filter out the finer silty stuff.

The second filtration – and then you are done!

Et voila! You have yourself some tasty pecan liqueur. I can’t wait to see what sort of cocktail recipes I can use this in!

Making Milk Liqueur

There is a way to make a milk liqueur that you can add to acidic /fruity drinks, and it won’t curdle! Sure, this is mostly because it has already curdled, but hey! You still get a surprising amount of milky delicious flavour from it. So much so, that I am willing to bet that letting the milk infuse the alcohol for a long period of time allows many more of the alcohol-soluble flavors to leave the milk and go into the alcohol than you would get if you simply added whey to alcohol as a shortcut. You even get that miraculous milky velvety texture.

It is easy enough to make your own, you simply mix equal parts milk, sugar, and vodka together and let it sit for two weeks. Hopefully by then, the milk proteins will have denatured and separated out from the liquids and the alcohol. If this has happened, you should then filter out the curdled solids with a cloth or coffee filter, leaving a rich golden liqueur for sipping or mixing (discard the solids).

Some milk liqueur in progress.  You actually want/need it to separate like this. And it will get yellower as it ages.

I was lucky enough to get some separation doing it this way, but apparently this doesn’t always work. Some people suggest putting a lemon, orange, or other citrus fruit into the mix. The acid in the fruit will help denature the proteins and speed up the clumping process. However, I just wanted a pure milky flavour, without any overpowering citrus in the mix. Especially if I want to mix this into cocktails, I don’t want the extra complexity of orange in there. Don’t get me wrong, I can imagine that this could taste like a delicious Creamsicle. Just not what I was going for. Apparently, some people also put chocolate into the mix. Again, sounds delicious, but not the pure essence of milk that I want.

And here is the same jar of in-progress milk liqueur, 2 weeks later. Note the interesting separation pattern of solids, liquids, solids. Some pretty cool density separation going on here.

So is there some other way to make sure your milk will curdle correctly, every time? I guess you could use vinegar, but that would be even grosser than lemon. And then it hit me… why not use cream of tartar?

All you need is a more acidic environment to denature the milk proteins, and cream of tartar is a relatively flavourless acid – one that is often added to pastries which need acidity for the chemistry to work, without adding any offending flavors.

Seemed like it should do the trick, so to the second batch (which was about 2 cups total) I added 1.5 teaspoons of cream of tartar before sealing it up and mixing. This worked perfectly! By the second day I already saw loads of separation, and the alcohol/water phase continued to get richer and more golden as time went on. It was absolutely a better result than without the acid!

Now I can make drinks with shrubs (and other acidic flavours) in addition to milk liqueur, and not worry about it curdling and becoming gross.

Whiskey, cherry shrub, milk liqueur, and a cherry. It was surprisingly milky and delicious. How often can you taste these flavours together? Not very, since the milk normally curdles! This is a breakthrough.

I hadn’t considered this before making milk liqueur, but this could even the be the first time you get to taste milk mixed with acidic ingredients like lemon or shrub, because the 2 week infusion process brings all the milk flavours into the liqueur while also removing the curdling elements. So essentially this liqueur opens up all new possibilities. Delicious possibilities.