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.

The Thirst Order

After seeing “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” we went home and I invented a drink called The Thirst Order (inspired by the movie). The movie was fun, and the drink was tasty. It has quickly become the new household favorite 🙂

Now, I shall share it with you…

Thirst-Order

If you want to copy and paste it, that is:

The Thirst Order

1 1/2 oz gin (we like Bummer and Lazarus)
3/4 oz Saint Germaine
3/4 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz dry vermouth (we like Imbue’s Bittersweet Vermouth)
2 dashes orange bitters (we like Regan’s Orange Bitters)
2 raspberries
absinthe rinse (we like Saint George)

You don’t need to muddle the raspberries or anything, just shake with ice and that will mash them up just fine. And they make the drink so pretty and pink. I do suggest straining through a very fine-mesh strainer, though, unless you like seeds in your drink!

The Thirst Order was inspired heavily by its predecessor, The Christine Special, which was, I believe: 1.5 oz gin, 0.5 oz dry vermouth, 0.5 oz Saint Germaine, with orange bitters. Clearly, the Christine Special was heavily inspired by its predecessor, the bijou, which was heavily inspired by its predecessor, the martini, and so on. I didn’t invent the bijou or the martini, by-the-way.

Mold-Ripened Cheese

Today, after the successes I’ve had with cheddar etc, I’ve decided to try my hand at mold-ripened cheese. This was inspired by reading that, if you don’t want to buy the Penicillium candidum, you can just use a piece of some other mold-ripened cheese (like brie or Camembert) to inoculate the new cheese. I thought that sounded easy, so I went ahead and tried it.

Trying our hand at brie now

So far, so good. Let us see how the mold grows!

Raw Versus Pasteurized Milk for Cheddar

As you might recall, two months back I started some batches of cheddar. I was really curious to know how different the cheese would be using raw versus pasteurized milk, and whether I would be able to perceive that difference.

It has now officially passed the minimum recommended time period to age the cheddar, so we cut one of each open to taste. I know that I said we had planned to wait four months before eating it, but I was just too curious. I mostly needed to know if it was a horrible disaster, but also I wanted to know if the two chesses were any different.

Homemade cheese with homemade bread.
I also made some bread for the occasion

I have to be honest, I wasn’t really expecting there to be a huge difference. I thought there would probably be some subtle, nuanced flavors in the raw cheese that the pasteurized cheese was lacking, but that they would be overall comparable.

I. Was. Wrong.

Homemade cheddar cheese.

The two cheeses were incredibly different. Monumentally different. They tasted nothing like the same cheese. The raw milk cheddar was pungent, complex, flavorful, sharp and delicious. The pasteurized milk cheddar was also tasty, but much more understated and mild, and did not have a smell.

I also gave the cheese to my siblings to try, and many of them pointed to the raw cheese and said “That one is amazing, what is the difference between them?”

So, overall, the raw cheese seems to have won the popular vote. But I do still have a soft spot in my heart for the pasteurized cheese. It still tasted really good, at least as good as a nice store-bought cheddar.

Why did they taste so different? Well, I can only imagine that it was a combination of the flavor changes introduced by the pasteurization process itself, but also because there was a much higher diversity of bacteria in the raw milk cheese. I did only add one species to the milks, after all, so the pasteurized milk cheddar was basically a monoculture.

I think this had to have been a large contribution, because the difference was so clearly above and beyond the minor flavor changes that come from pasteurization. Such an unexpected result! But also, so exciting!