Christopher Kimball: This is Milk Street Radio from PRX. I’m your host, Christopher Kimball. In the
United States, adults drink an average of 28 gallons of beer per year, but the first beer ever made was
nothing more than an accident, probably
Johnny Garrett: Probably a batch of bread gone wrong, probably too much moisture got into where
they’ve stored in the grain to make bread. It started to smell slightly funky. Some brave Gore man
decided to try some, and felt a little bit inebriated, a little bit good about himself, and they decided they
liked that effect.
CK: How beer took over the world that’s coming up later in the show. But first, let’s talk about liquor.
Aaron Goldfarb, author of Dusty Booze, joins me now. Aaron, welcome to Milk Street.
Aaron Goldfarb: Thanks for having me.
CK: So, you use the term dusty hunters. What is dusty and who are the hunters? Let’s start there.
AG: Well, the bottles are dusty, and the hunters are the kind of eccentric weirdos, for a lack of a better
word, who seek them out. This was a term I first came upon about 10 years ago. A guy proudly called
himself a dusty hunter. And I said, well, what is that? And he said, I drive around Los Angeles to every
single liquor store I can find. One’s off the beaten path and neighborhoods I’d typically not go to, and I
look around to see if there’s old bottles of booze there.
CK: One would think the old bottles of booze are not that interesting, but you point out in your book
that, in fact, they’re a real find. So, it’s sort of like finding a really ancient, expensive bottle of wine.
Similar concept
AG: Yeah, I mean, even when I first heard the term, I was a whiskey enthusiast, I was a spirit’s
enthusiast. But I likewise thought, you know, who the hell cares if a bottle of makers marks from 1979 I
can buy one from this year, you know, right now. But this original dusty hunter explained to me that,
unlike wine or beer, spirits do not change once bottled. So, when you buy an old spirit, you’re literally
buying, you know, a sort of liquid time capsule. You open a 1960s gin, and you’re tasting what a person
from 1960 would have tasted when they had a gin martini. You open a, you know, 1980s whiskey,
you’re tasting what that whiskey would have tasted back then. Nothing’s happening from the time it’s
bottled. And that was very intriguing to me.
CK: When you’ve tasted older bottles, do you find, in some cases, a bourbon or a liquor or whiskey that
is really extraordinary because they made it differently back then?
AG: Yeah, absolutely. You know, bourbon has never been made differently, per se. You know, the the
bottle and bond act of 1897 has ensured that. But you know, it has been made differently. You know,
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corn was less of a commodity product back in the day the oak trees cut down to make oak barrels were
tons of years old, or 180 years old. I understand now they’re maybe 75 years old to make an oak barrel.
What about the yeast? You know, distillers used to ferment in cypress tanks, which you have to believe
a sort of micro floor was growing inside of them. Now it’s stainless steel. Everything’s stainless steel. So
all these little things from the past that were changed to things that are technically cleaner, more
efficient, more scientific, has, in many ways, in my opinion, in a lot of these dusty hunters’ opinion,
stripped character, flavor and complexity from a lot of spirits. And that’s just bourbon. You go to tequila,
agave is picked out of the ground a lot quicker than it was back then, back in the past. You know,
agave might grow to eight to 12 years old, very rich and full of sugar and perfect to ferment. Now it’s
plucked out of the ground quickly. It’s it’s shredded and cooked as quickly as possible, and it’s turned to
tequila and bottled as quickly as possible.
CK: Tell me about the Howard Hughes collection.
AG: Yeah, so the through line of the book follows one dusty hunter, Kevin Langdon Ackerman, this Los
Angeles man who tells me early on that he believes that Howard Hughes the eccentric billionaire when
he died in 1976 at his famous offices in Los Angeles called 7000 Romaine he died, they locked up his
office, and sitting on the bar cart was an incredible collection of booze. And for whatever reason, the
new owners just kept that office locked and never moved Howard’s stuff, and he’d heard rumors that all
this booze was still on the shelves, and Kevin wanted to get it so early on in the book, I follow along
with Kevin as he tries to find it. And eventually I start looking for it myself, and I can tell you, by the end
of the book, I do get to taste Howard Hughes booze.
CK: So, without giving away too much spoiler alert. What was most interesting about that search?
AG: Well, you know what actually happens is the second owners after Howard Hughes dies,
eventually, I think they get sick of probably wasting an office space, and so they go to auction with
Howard Hughes’s other things in his office, his golf clubs, his aviator goggles, his, you know, movie
projectors, and the auctioneer just takes his bar card as kind of a toss in he’s never even sold booze,
and he doesn’t even know there’s a collectible market for old booze. He doesn’t even know if it’s safe to
drink, but he puts it up online for an online auction, and it ends up getting the second biggest hammer
price of anything on the market. He says to himself, huh, maybe I was wrong to misjudge this. And the
only reason it got the second is because it wasn’t on a typical auction site that dusty hunters haunt. It
was on a movie memorabilia website that one man just so happened to find a man called Matthew
Powell who owns a bar called The Doctor’s Office in Seattle, where you can drink Howard Hughes
booze today.
CK: How much did it go for?
AG: The lot only went for $6,000 or so for about 90 bottles. Now, a pour of Howard Hughes’s 1946 old
forester will cost you, I think, about $200 an ounce, though. So, I think, I think the doctor is doing pretty
well,
CK: And that’s the story everybody has in the back of their mind as they rush around, right?
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AG: Yep, exactly. Well, the early days, these guys were finding $5 bottles of, you know, old granddad
from the 50s, and, you know, eventually they’d be able to flip them for 2000 bucks or so.
CK: So, take me on a visit. So, let’s assume we find this liquor store in the middle of nowhere. It’s full of
dusty bottles, literally and figuratively. Take me through your process. What would you look for? How
would you start your investigation?
AG: Well, you don’t want to be too eager. You don’t want to look like the guy who’s about to, you know,
be the thief.
CK: You mentioned some tips to determine if there’s a really old bottle, you know, for example, a
surgeon general warning, you say, indicates the bottles after 1989. The tax stamp. You want to talk
about that, that’s a indication as well.
AG: Yeah, that’s probably the easiest one. A tax stamp. It’s really just a red or green strip across the
cap, sealing it off that tells you something’s before 1981 empirical and metric also is a big one. No one
ever thinks about how the spirits industry is really the only thing in America that stuck with the metric
system. But before the early 80s, I think there were 32 different sizes of bottles, gallons and whatnot.
So, if you find something in a measurement that you actually understand as an American, that’s
probably before the 1980s
CK: So, did you when you did this book, did you get the enthusiasm, the bug, the fever for this, or at
least understand what these people are doing?
AG: Well, of course, I understand what these people are doing, and I already had the fever, at least a
very mild fever, when I started the book. But as I started talking to collectors in other realms, tequila,
rum, weird liqueurs, it just made my reach and what I was interested even wider. You know, I don’t
necessarily need those 5000 bottles in my house, although my wife would say I have plenty. But I am
curious about tasting a lot of these things I read about, and a lot of collectors tell me, are incredible. So
once you have it, it’s insatiable urge to try these things and acquire these things and consume these
things.
CK: So, what are you collecting? Are you collecting whiskey now, or have you moved on to something
else?
AG: I collected whiskey for a very long time, both modern and vintage. The book really made me
interested in vintage tequila, which I feel more than any spirits category, modernization is kind of ruined.
So, this guy in my book, Pablo Moy, who is a vintage bar owner, he tells me, when you taste vintage
tequila, it’s like the first time you’ve ever tasted tequila. And I didn’t know what that meant until I had a
1960s salsa, which is not a particularly ballyhooed tequila these days. And I imagine in 1960s it was a
$2 bottle, but I had it, and it was only a $30 pour, and it absolutely floored me. You know, how much
vegetalness, how much terroir, how much minerality, how much of the land you actually tasted in it. I
thought, wow, this is really what tequila should taste like, and there are some producers today trying to
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get that flavor back Fortaleza the most notably. But you know, when you taste vintage tequila, for most
people, they’re going to say this tastes like no tequila I’ve ever tasted before.
CK: Aaron, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure,
AG: Happy to do it.
CK: That was Aaron Goldfarb, author of Dusty Booze. Now it’s time to answer your cooking questions
with my co-host Sara Moulton. Sara is, of course, the star of Sara’s Weeknight Meals on public
television. Her latest book is Home Cooking.101, so Sara, if I like bourbon, and I like rye, as you well
know, and I go into my local liquor store, and you know, some of the bourbons 35 or $40 Some of it’s
$80 I mean, Pappy Van Winkle is over $100, and I just don’t understand. Unlike the wine business,
where I there is a big difference between a great wine and a good wine, I wonder if there’s a big
difference in bourbons, because there’s only five distilleries in the country that make 95% of the
bourbons. I wonder if it’s just they slap a label on it. It’s this is a Pappy Van Winkle. This is whatever. I
just wonder whether this is just all packaging and marketing. What do you think?
Sara Moulton: Well, the trouble is, I’m not a big bourbon drinker, so I really wouldn’t know.
CK: I’m going to do a blind tasting.
SM: I think you must
CK: and see if there really is a big difference. I just wonder, because it’s, I bet it’s there is some
difference, but I wonder if it’s
SM: all that important.
CK: Yeah, okay,
SM: Well, I see a new article in Milk Street, yeah, coming our way.
CK: Let’s take your call. Welcome to Milk Street who’s calling?
Caller: Kate from Des Moines, Iowa
CK: Hey, Kate, how are you?
Caller: I’m good. How are you?
CK: Pretty good. How can we help you?
Caller: Earlier this year, I’d been to an event, and they had a really, really nice wine cocktail that was
like a red wine and balsamic vinegar and tonic water, or soda water, or some fizzy water, and I’m pretty
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sure there were some bitters in it too, but I can’t find anything to, you know, give me the right direction
to go on that, or any measurements, because everything’s just recipes for sangria.
CK: Well, I interviewed someone who wrote a book about Aperitif’s in France, and the book was full of
fabulous drinks and using different ingredients, like sous, you know, which is sort of a bitter lemon
flavor and some other things. That’s what I would look as the French aperitifs, because there’s so many
wonderful drinks. Some of them will use a liqueur of some kind. Some of them will use wine. Some of
them are spritzers. Some of them use a little bit of gin with them. Some of them use bitters. There’s just
a whole world of these things out there, way beyond, you know, the couple of things that we’re used to
here.
Caller: Well, I’ve been experimenting on myself. I know there was balsamic in it, so, you know, I got
that there was something fizzy, so I’ve been doing, you know, fever tree tonic water. And there was a
red wine, and I’m pretty sure it was a fruitier one, like a Chianti or something of that sort. So, I mean,
I’ve been trying, but it’s just not the same. It’s
SM: It’s going to be hard, I think, for us to help you come up with this recipe, not having tasted it
CK: I have the two books for you. One of them is called Aperitif, a Cocktail Hour, the French Way, a
Recipe book. It’s a great book. And then also a friend of ours, David Leibovitz, who’s from San
Francisco originally, he’s been in France for 18 -20, years now, he has a book which is also great,
called Drinking French. (I think I’ve seen that.) Yeah, and he’s really talented, and you’ll find a ton of
stuff in his book too. Those two books, try Drinking French with David Leibovitz. What you might do is
you might find something there, very similar to what you’ve had
Caller: Everything I look up is wrong. It’s like, there’s if you look for a wine punch, you get sangria. If
you look for wine cocktails, you get, like, Pure Royale. It’s like, no, that’s champagne. Maybe I should
look for a balsamic cocktail.
CK: It’s so weird that Sangria is like the only wine mixer recipe that we have in this country right now. I
mean, there’s 1000s of them out there, and that’s the one that’s kind of made it. I do remember testing
sangria, like 15 20, years ago, we came to the conclusion that lower quality wine was actually better
because you didn’t want all those tannins. You wanted kind of a cheap one. But anyway
Caller: Yeah, and I would think it’s in quantity. It’s probably going to be a red box wine
CK: Two buck chuck. Well, David Lebovitz, Dinking French that would be my I
SM: I agree. I agree with Chris. We’re rooting for you. Please let us know what you discover. I
Caller: I will. Thank you.
CK: Take care.
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SM: All right, Kate, bye, bye.
CK: This is Milk Street Radio. Give us a call anytime. 855-426-9843, that’s 855-426-9843, or email us
at questions at Milkstreetradio.com,
SM: Welcome to Milk Street. Who’s calling?
Caller: Hi. This is Brandon from Arlington, Massachusetts,
SM: Hi, Brandon, how can we help you?
Caller: I have a bottle of a rum alternative, like nonalcoholic, and I didn’t really like it in any of my
normal rum drinks, so I’m trying to figure out what to do with it. And it’s quite a bit more, could you the
better?
SM: Okay, well, it’s so did you try it and say, hot buttered rum?
Caller: I have not. I’ve like, thrown it into, like, hot chocolate and stuff, and it’s okay. I just don’t drink
those things all that much. Because, actually, I was, like, really interested to try and, like, do some
baking with it. I was considering reducing it a little bit to turn into more of a syrup. That’s pretty good.
actually
SM: You could do that if you think it would turn into a syrup. I’m sure there’s sugar in them there hills.
You could probably do that. And then you could say, use it.
CK: Use it in bread pudding
SM: or sticky buns.
Caller: Oh, that’s an excellent idea.
SM: You could put that reduced syrup in the bottom of the pan or pour it over afterwards. I think that
would be nice. But those numbers actually also bread pudding. What you could do is reduce it and then
either make a creme anglaise. Or, here’s a little secret, ice cream is actually crème anglaise vanilla ice
cream. You could add it to that. Or, you know, there’s another thing. Have you ever heard of
Zabaglione? Or zabayo is the French version. Zabaglione is the Italian it’s eggs and sugar and an
alcoholic. It’s usually, it’s like Marsala in Zabaglione. And you cook it over a double boiler till it gets
really, really foamy. And you you have to cook it till it thickens, you know, like at 165 or whatever, and
then you can chill it, or you can eat it hot with fruit, either way. And that’s yummy. Anyway, Chris?
CK: Was this given to you? Or did you go out and buy this nonalcoholic rum?
Caller: I did. I did buy it myself.
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CK: I’m not a fan of replacing something that works well, like the marsala wine, the zabiani is pretty
hard to replace if you’re making a bread pudding or something else, the alcohol itself is sort of part of
the flavoring. I think reducing it is a good idea, but my guess is you’d be 1,000% better off with real rum
for a recipe. So, reduce it down and taste it. And if it tastes good, fine, then you can use it as a sauce or
whatever. But rum is going to be better than this stuff, and you also the heat of the alcohol is really
important to balance the other things in a recipe sometimes. Like with a zombie own, with the eggs,
you want to balance that out the fat. Anyway, your Intrepid. I applaud your sense of adventure, but if
you taste it and it’s not good, I just would goodbye, throw it out.
SM: How do you really feel Chris?
CK: No, it’s just like, I mean, we’re not talking, you know, a fortune to go buy a bottle of rum, (no) and if
the food’s going to be better, or the drink or whatever, with a real thing, you know, sorry I just like
SM: Brandon. I say try the sticky buns and reduce it first.
Caller: I think that’s an excellent suggestion. I’ll go forward
CK: Okay, wait, wait a minute, we’re going to have to call you back about was this a good idea or not a
good idea?
SM: Yeah, okay, do let us know.
CK: Please. Please be honest. So, all right, well, give it a try,
SM: Yes,
CK: and then go and buy a real bottle of rum.
SM: Okay, great Brandon, thanks for calling. Bye bye. Take care.
Caller: Bye.
CK: You’re listening to Milk Street Radio up next how the invention of beer changed the world. Hey, this
Is Milk Street Radio. I’m your host. Christopher Kimball, now it’s time for a beer history lesson with
Johnny Garrett. According to Johnny, it’s not humans who made beer, it’s beer that made us human. In
his latest book The Meaning of Beer, he reveals how entire civilizations, religious movements and
scientific advancements have been shaped by beer. Johnny, welcome to Milk Street.
Johnny Garrett: Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here.
CK: So, what’s your best guess of how beer got invented? You mentioned ancient Samaria, 13,000
years years ago. That was in The Epic of Gilgamesh, which goes back quite a long time. And then what
was the process 10,000 years ago whatever it was of making beer. How is it different than today?
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JG: So, the fundamentals are pretty similar. The best evidence we have is from about 13,000 years
ago at a place called Raqefet cave, which is not a million miles from Nazareth in Israel. And there, the
Natufians were essentially taking foraged grains, mixing them with warm water. And if you left that for a
couple of days, the wild yeast, wild bacteria that are in the air would infect that and turn it slightly sour,
but also ferment some of the sugars in that grain. And we even know that they were actually molting the
grain, whether that was on purpose or whether it was through sort of longer storage. And then they
added the hot water that stopped that. We’re not entirely sure. My guess as to how they discovered that
that was happening. It’s probably a batch of bread gone wrong. Probably too much moisture got into
where they were storing the grain to make bread. It started to smell slightly funky. Some brave
gourmand decided to try some and felt a little bit inebriated, a little bit good about himself, and they
decided they liked that effect.
CK: You also said the beer was instead of water, because water was dicey, because it was often
polluted in some way. You said, the laborers working in the Great Pyramid were given roughly 10 pints
of weak beer a day. (Yeah) which I mean, I had a neighbor of mine in Vermont who was drinking 10
pints of beer, but it was, they were a little stronger. So what? What do you think that beer was like? You
say, weak beer. Is it like Pabst ribbon diluted by 200% or something.
JG: Yeah. I mean, we, we think that those beers would have been around one possibly 2% ABV
maximum. (I see) that’s, you know, enough to kill off most bacteria, anything that might be dangerous
for you. You know, you wouldn’t really get inebriated at 2% it’s generally about 3% alcohol where you
can start to have that effect. So, we don’t have to worry about, you know, the health and safety,
necessarily, of those building the pyramids outside of the fact that, you know, they were laying giant
stones every sort of two minutes or so to make the Great Pyramid of Giza. But it would have been
literally, it would have been calories for them. It would have been safe water, and it would have also
been delicious. We think they would have very much enjoyed that flavor, rather than the probably
slightly insipid, slightly muddy water that might have been available in the Nile Delta. And, you know, it
was used as currency by the Egyptians. So, it wasn’t just that they were given 10 pints to sort of slake
their thirst. That was what they lived off of. You know, that was a huge part of their calorie intake for the
day.
CK: So how did beer and other alcoholic drinks become so the provenance of monasteries right during
the Dark Ages and early Middle Ages? Why was that something in particular done by monks?
JG: I mean, I guess the first thing to say is that beer was seen as a gift from God, essentially, is the
translation in several different cultures for beer. So, it already had that religious element, and it was
incredibly important even way back to the Natufians at ____ they were brewing right next to where they
were doing burial rituals. So, it’s always had that kind of religious element. It’s also worth saying that
wine wasn’t invented until about 5000 years later. So, it had the jump on the other great sort of alcohol
that humans invented very early on. But again, it kind of came as currency. So, when monasteries were
founded, particularly early on in human history, they didn’t have a lot of money. They had to find a way
to raise the funds for what they were doing. And often it was, you know, rich landowners that wanted to
buy themselves into heaven. But quite frequently, it was manual labor that they did. It was they’d start
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farming the land. They’d grow grain, which they turned into beer and bread. They were also great
cheese makers the early monasteries. So, they were using beer, again, as something they could sell as
sustenance for themselves. When food was was very scarce. A lot of the Belgian, even as late as the
19th century, a lot of the Belgian Trappist monasteries that are still brewing today, they were founded
purely off the back of the money that they made through their beer brewing.
CK: Well, as I remember, I mean, not personally, but coal miners after work would go down to the pub,
and Guinness was dinner. (Yeah. I mean), Guinness was food. It was considered food, right?
JG: Absolutely, it was. It was a daily fact in the lives of everybody on earth. There isn’t a culture that
we’re aware of that wasn’t brewing and using it as nourishment. And obviously, the thing we have to
remember is that, again, the beer was very, very weak until the last couple of 100 years. So, you know,
we talk and we laugh about it a lot in beer circles about the idea of giving kids beer at breakfast, but we
did, and it would have had very minimal effect in terms of inebriation, but a very, very important effect in
terms of nourishment and calories.
CK: So, your book goes into great detail about the history of beer and the different points along the way
of creating a modern beer. Could you just give us like two or three key moments in the history of beer
where the process changed dramatically because of some, let’s say, new technology.
JG: Yeah. I mean, so a huge moment, I think, certainly for modern beer lovers, certainly IPA lovers, is
the discovery of the role of hops. So, hops are essentially these beautiful little green flowers, the shape
sort of like, like the ace of spades. They’re related, actually to the marijuana plant, but within them, they
have these alpha acids, these, these certain chemicals that are very anti-bacterial, which makes them
quite a successful plant. There’re wild hops everywhere. When we started putting them into beer to try
and stop that souring happening. And slowly, we learned that it also had this, this bittering effect, which
we then looked to balance for centuries. So quite how we found that out? We’re not sure. But there was
an Abbess Hildegard in the 1100s who writes about the fact that if you add hops to beer, you could stop
what she called the putre fractions, so that the spoiling of these beers. But she also said that if you
drink hops, it makes the was it the weight of a man’s soul sad, which, I think she’s describing a
hangover essentially being made worse by by the use of hops. But with the reason we think that hops
started being used is because monks would have been using them to dye clothes that they’d have been
selling to fund monasteries. So, we think somehow there’s been a crossover there, and they’ve ended
up in the beers.
CK: So, were there other technical things that came around that really transformed beer making?
JG: Yeah, so we have this incredible period in the sort of 19th century that takes up a lot of the book,
which is the story of refrigeration. And really that actually starts in the cellar of a brewery in the late
1860s so the first ever refrigeration, commercialized refrigeration was done in a brewery to keep the
cellars cold. So we can sort of credit beer with inventing the refrigeration process. And then people like
the owner of Van Hauser Busch, Adolphus Busch, who went on to brew Budweiser, these were the
people that put it into railroad cars and spread this whole idea of cold chain distribution, essentially,
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CK; So would a Budweiser when it was first introduced. Is that a very different beer than today? Do you
think?
JG: I think the Budweiser of the 1880s would have been not a million miles away from where we are
today, I mean, it would have involved very different ingredients. It probably would have been much
more bitter, involved many more hops. It wouldn’t have been as pin bright. It might have had an
element of haze to it, although the big innovation that made Budweiser so famous was the fact that they
were using rice in it. And that was a response to the fact that American barley produced haze in the
beer, whereas in Europe it didn’t. So, brewers all over the US, most of them, almost all of them, in fact,
German immigrants, Pabst, Anheuser, Busch, Miller, Coors, all of these were German immigrants.
They were trying to create the recipes and the flavors of home in their beers but were finding the beer
coming out hazy. So, they were adding corn, which is obviously huge in in America in the 1800s and
rice, if you were spending a bit more money.
CK: So, what’s a lico pour a glass full of foam not beer?
JG: Yeah, is literally a pint of beer foam. It’s almost like wet meringue. It’s this glorious, dense, creamy
kind of head that you can only create with a certain kind of tap. The brand that made it famous is called
Luca. So, it’s a side poor tap. They call it where, instead of pulling the tap down, like you’ll see in most
bars, you’ll pull it to the right, and you’ll have exact control over the flow. And you could create this
beautiful, silky foam. And the reason it’s so popular is because, essentially, it’s much less gassy than
natural beer. It does have less CO2 in it, and you can drink it very, very quickly, which is also great. It’s
also half price when you get poured it in the check bar. Have you had one? Many times? I even make
them at home. You obviously like it.
CK: So, I would feel cheated if I got foam and not beer.
JG: Well, yeah. I mean, I would say that foam is beer. (Well, that’s fair). Yeah, we say, don’t fear the
foam is is essentially beard, where the the CO two is almost broken out of the surface and created
these giant bubbles. But like so you are charged half for a pint of it, because it is probably it settles to
about half beer, and it is just this, this beautiful, incredible texture. And you know, in the Czech
Republic, you’ll never be served a beer that isn’t at least, at least a quarter foam, because it also really
protects the beer from oxidation. It knocks out some of the carbonation, and it transforms the texture of
the beer. And if I could change one thing about beer culture, it would be for people to take foam as
seriously as they take the liquid beneath it.
CK: So, if I came to you, which I am doing right now, and as it’s like, give me a few, a handful of beers I
should go get and drink that I probably do not drink now, like, what are the ones that are going to really
open my eyes to the full breadth of the opportunity here,
JG: I would say you should absolutely try a side pour of Pilsner Raquel or Budva, the original Czech,
Budva, rather than Budweiser, to see what really great Czech style lager, which was the origin of all
pale lager tastes like, because it is, you know, the Budva that I’ve had in that brewery that I write about
in the book and say it’s the best beer I’ve ever had tasted of strawberries and fresh French croissants.
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And really, you know, it’s nothing like the lagers that we sort of choked down in our teens. So, yeah, I
tracked down that. I would say, try some of the really, really great IPAs things like Russian River Pliny
the Elder, or from Vermont, actually, Heady Topper and Focal Banger from the alchemist. These are
the sort of beers that changed my view.
CK: What’s the one thing you’ve learned doing this that really surprised you or shocked you about
either the history of the beer or where it’s made, or something you didn’t know
JG: Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s what I talk about the end of chapter two. So, Louis Pasteur
credited with discovering, sort of the role of yeast, the fact that it was it was a microbe. It was a fungus.
It was eating sugar and spitting out CO2 and alcohol. He was drafted into the beer world as as a
chemist, as a lecturer at the University of Lille because one of his students, his family, made beetroot
vodka. And I’m still not really sure what that is, or what it could possibly taste like, but they were having
issues with their fermentations going sour, and so they they got Louis Pasteur in to have a look, and he
looked in his microscope, and he observed it, and he realized that, essentially, there were clouds of
bacteria, although we didn’t know the bacteria at the time that was affecting the fermentations. And this
was huge. Obviously, this led to the invention of pasteurization, which is named after him, so heating it
to the point where you kill those, those bacteria’s. But the biggest thing that came out of it came from a
surgeon, a Scottish surgeon called Joseph Lister. He invented modern surgery because he discovered
that it was bacteria that was infecting the wounds of people, and he put that together because he read
Louis Pasteur’s studies of beer and why beer was turning sour
CK: Was there a theory in beer making that you shouldn’t clean your tanks, because that was sort of
part of the flavor. Is like bread making, you know, you have the yeast spores and a bakery, and that
sort of adds to the flavor. Is that true, or should you actually clean everything every time you brew?
JG: I mean, essentially, it was a hangover from, I guess, the the the days when we thought that the
gods were blessing our vessels. So, if you, if you cleaned that pot, you wouldn’t do anything to that
part. If it had been blessed, you would leave it as it is, and you would keep brewing beer in it. And that’s
survived for the centuries, millennia, and started to change as a result of the work of Louis Pasteur. And
obviously other breweries had started to figure this out already, and they they’d started to clean things.
But even, as recently says as every beer geek who’s listening to this will know Orval. It’s a stunning
Belgian beer brewed at a monastery on the French border. And it’s, it’s famous for having a very classic
flavor of britanomics, which is a certain strain of yeast that ferments very slowly, but it creates this flavor
of sort of essentially like farmyard funkiness, so a little bit like manure, but in a very intriguing and quite
delicious way. But what happened was they had some issues with some souring at the brewery, and so
they cleaned everything, and they they lost that brett flavor along with the sour. Yeah. So they then the
story goes that there was one monk who was tasked with trying to reintroduce the brettanomyces
infection in and he found it by lobbing a bit of the old rafters into one of the brews from the roof. I don’t
know how true that is, but it is. It is a glorious story.
CK: Johnny, thank you so much. It’s been, it’s been a real pleasure.
JG: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
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CK: That was Johnny Garrett, author of The Meaning of Beer. You’re listening to Milk Street Radio up
next Alex Ainouz cries tears of joy over homemade wine. Hi. I’m Christopher Kimball. This is Milk
Street Radio. Right now, Milk Street’s JM Hirsch is here with a tip for your next cocktail party.
JMH: When most people think of salt in cocktails, they think of putting it on the rim of a margarita glass,
but there’s actually a much better way to use salt in your drinks, just like in our cooking, in our drinking,
salt heightens and brightens all the other flavors. Just a tiny hint of salt won’t taste briny. In fact, you’re
actually not even going to know it’s there, but it will elevate everything else. Professional bartenders
usually do this by making a saline solution. Just one-half teaspoon of a 4% saline solution has a
profound effect rounding out a cocktail sweet notes, heightening the vanilla in the bourbon for an old
fashioned, for example, or rounding out the lime in a margarita. So, it’s really easy to make. So, to
make a cocktail, saline mix four grams, say, a generous half tablespoon of diamond crystal, kosher salt,
and 96 grams, or about six tablespoons plus one teaspoon of water until dissolved. Then just use one
half teaspoon of this mixture per cocktail. Now, alternatively, for cocktails that are shaken or well stirred,
you can simply just add a tiny pinch, let’s say six to 10 granules of kosher salt directly to the cocktail. It’ll
dissolve without too much trouble. Now, to see what a difference this makes, do a side by side with
your favorite cocktail, one with salt and one without. You are going to be pleasantly surprised.
CK: For more cocktail inspiration, please visit Milk Street Radio.com. I’m Christopher Kimball, and
you’re listening to Milk Street Radio right now my co-host Sara Moulton and I will be answering a few
more of your cooking questions.
SM: Welcome to Milk Street. Who’s calling?
Caller: Hi, Sara and Christopher. This is Dean Holtz, calling from Fargo, North Dakota.
SM: How can we help you today?
Caller: Several years ago, I bought some six-inch cast-iron skillets. They have lids, and earlier this
year, we had some English muffins my wife had made. So, I decided to put one egg a piece in these
pans, and I just beat it with a fork in a small dish and then poured them in and with the oil. I turn the
burner on just before I put it in, so the pan isn’t hot, and so I put the lid on, and when it starts to steam, I
look and it’s done. It’s done. But the volume of this thing is incredible. It almost quintuples. I’m
assuming it’s just steam, or is there something other at work here?
SM: No, it’s the egg. That’s why eggs are used in Angel Food Cake and souffles. When you beat them,
they create a foam. And if you take out the whites and beat them separately, they can increase in
volume by eight you know. If you want to get even wilder, combine the egg yolks with some other
vegetables, and then beat the egg whites and fold them in, and you’ll make, essentially, what’s a souffle
omelet, which will be even larger than what you just described.
CK: But wait a minute, you’re beating a whole egg, right? The egg white is not going to beat up in the
presence of a yolk, (no) because of the fat. What I think is going on is, I got this recipe from a Basque
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cookbook. When they scramble eggs, they use oil, right? Butter won’t get over 212 until the water, of
which there’s quite a lot steams out. So, oil will get much hotter. And since the oil gets hotter, the liquid,
the water, essentially in the egg, will turn to steam much more readily. And therefore, with oil, not
butter, you’re going to get more lift. I don’t think it’s about beating it ahead of time. I think it’s about the
liquid, the water in the egg, turning to steam, and that’ll turn to steam much faster with oil.
SM: But Dean, did you use oil?
Caller: I used olive oil. Yeah, at the bottom of the pan
SM: I missed that somehow
CK: That’s what it is. If you did it with butter, I don’t think you get quite the same result, because butter
is not going to get hotter faster because of this 20% or 18% water in butter. But I’m a little surprised
though you got it like a four times volume. How thick was this half an inch, or an inch, or what?
Caller: Well, between a half an inch and an inch, I mean, the beaten egg, it wouldn’t even cover the
base of the six inch skillet, but the sides of it, it climbed right up the sides of the skillet, and I suppose
the center of it was probably a half an inch thick.
CK: I think it’s the top was on it used oil, and then you got a lot of steam going on. And so, yeah, that’s
interesting.
Caller: It was interesting to me, given all the complaints about high egg prices recently, that’s a good
way to double your egg usage with one carton.
SM: there you go
CK: That’s a good one on me too. Thanks, Dean.
SM: Okay,
Caller: Thanks a lot.
SM: All right. Bye, bye.
CK: This is Milk Street Radio if your dinner is in trouble. Give us a call anytime. 855-426-9843, that’s
855-426-9843, or email us at questions at Milk Street radio.com, welcome to Milk Street. Who’s calling?
Caller: This is Lisa from Los Angeles.
CK: How can we help you?
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Caller: I’m a pretty good cook and baker, but my husband is, I don’t want to say picky, but he definitely
likes what he likes. And one of the things he says that he doesn’t like is biscuits. However, on two of
our travels, he has found biscuits that he does like, and I’d like to be able to make a biscuit at home.
One of them is from GW Fins in New Orleans, and another is from Butcher & Singer in Philadelphia.
CK: What is it that he likes about those biscuits?
Caller: I think that they’re not, as he would say, dry, as what I would think of a standard biscuit is. I
have heard that maybe a lard biscuit would help. And so, I tried to make one that was combination
butter and lard the inside he liked, but he still thought it was a little bit dry on the outside.
CK: Are the ones at these restaurants rolls, or are they biscuits? I mean true biscuits, like a baking
powder biscuit
Caller: They are a true biscuit. The ones that GW Fins are a drop biscuit, (right) And the ones at
Butcher & Singer are a cut biscuit. And I think the ones at the Singer might be, I don’t want to say
bready, but it’s almost like they put butter on top of it afterward with a little bit of salt. So, they have, like,
more of a bread feel than a biscuit feel. Even though they are a raised biscuit
CK: The issues would be how much fat to flour, right? So, a typical biscuit recipe has two cups of flour
and about seven tablespoons of fat, whether it’s butter, lard or a combination or vegetable shortening,
in general, lard, I mean really good leaf lard, which is the fat around the kidney and the pig, will give you
a softer biscuit than butter. Butter doesn’t tend to give you really soft baked goods the way lard would.
That would be one thing you could do. You could increase the amount of fat to flour from seven
tablespoons per two cups to eight or nine tablespoons. That might help. You could brush the tops with
butter before you put them in as well. Might help. There’s a cream biscuit recipe that’s very famous for
James Beard’s, cream biscuit recipe that’s very simple, because you don’t have to cut the fat into the
flour you just use cream. I’ve made them a few times, and Sara’s, you’ve made them too. I think those
might be a little softer, but those are my suggestions. Is increase the fat to flour, use lard or vegetable
shorting instead of butter, and then brush the tops of butter before they go into the oven. I’m out of
ideas.
SM: I basically agree. I would say whatever biscuit you make, brush it with butter and a little bit of salt,
for sure, since that seems to be a hit with your husband, I 100% agree with the cream biscuits. That’s
my go to and I don’t ever find them dry. So just look up cream biscuits. There’s no other fat in them. It’s
just flour, baking powder, salt, cream, and they’re very easy to make.
Caller: Okay
CK: I was going to suggest doing something different, which is make Parker house rolls, ah, butter.
They’re dipped in butter, and they’re sort of shingled in a nine by 13 baking pan and baked. We used to
make those every year for Thanksgiving. If he likes soft, there is nothing softer more buttery than
Parker House rolls so maybe he’s a man who thinks he wants a biscuit, but he actually wants a roll.
That’s something you should try, because my guess is he’s going to be pretty happy with that.
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Caller: Okay, I have looked into those. I haven’t tried to make them yet.
CK: You know, it’s a yeasted roll.
SM: It’s a little bit of work, it’s more work than a biscuit, but
CK: it’s very soft and pillowy.
SM: That’s a brilliant suggestion dump the biscuit instead of the husband. Sorry.
CK: Lisa, thank you so much. Give those Parker house rolls a chance.
SM: Yes,
Caller: I will do so. Thank you appreciate it. Bye bye.
CK: This is Milk Street Radio. Now it’s time to step into the lab with our friend Alex Ainouz. Alex, how
are things in Paris?
Alex Ainouz: They are busy. Chris, they are busy. And they are busy for a reason. I’ve been obsessed
recently about a new project of mine that has taken all my focus, all my efforts, my sweat and tears,
and it is wine making at home. Have you ever made your own wine? Chris,
CK: Oh, no. This is, this is the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes I know. I know people who have, and they
rarely reappear. They just go down the hole
AA: Exactly. Prepare yourself to hear the story of Alex in Wonderland. Okay, so I, you know, I’ve got
this thing where I just regularly get obsessed over ingredients that are around me and how to recreate
them, but I’ve got this special connection with wine making, obviously, because I’m French, but also
because I’m just a big wine fan. I. I don’t know. Is it a national treasure? Maybe I don’t know, but I’m in
love with wine, and I decided to make some myself. So, what does it take to make wine at home? Well,
first of all, I’d say that it takes time, because from the moment you start to the moment where you can
actually taste the wine you’ve made, whether it’s good or not, it takes months. And for me, it took 11
months to be able to produce six bottles of my own wine, which is not a very effective yield.
CK: Great return on investment. I’m sure
AA: I agree with you in terms of volume, it’s not very optimal. Now, I can run you through the main
steps of making wine, and they are pretty easy to understand. I’d say you have to prepare grapes. You
have to crush them, press them and ferment them. You obviously have to clarify the liquid that you’ve
got, and then you age it in batch, bottle it, age it again and enjoy. So, these are basically the steps to
make wine now, obviously, nothing ever goes to plan. Okay, so do we have exploding
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CK: So, do we have exploding bottles or something?
AA: Not quite, but I did had a few problems down the line. So, first of all, I had to find grapes. And
grapes made for wine are very different than what we call in France, table grapes, and you can almost
find them nowhere. I don’t know if that was a very good English sentence, but you cannot unless you
focus on one very specific variety that is called Musca. And that’s the one I picked, because this is the
only one you can enjoy at the table, but also you can make wine with, so I bought 10 kilos of Musca at
my local grocery store. It was a little weird for them to sell me all their stock, but I did, brought it back,
placed it in a bucket that I bought in a hardware store, and mashed the hell out of it with my hands and
my feet, obviously my feet. I had to do it like the really old-fashioned way.
CK: I definitely want the video of that,
AA: Yeah, but you can watch the video. It’s online. It’s on YouTube. So with this mash, it’s almost like
the process has already started, the skin and the pulp, they are mixing with one another, and so it starts
fermenting because of wild yeast present on the skin, so it turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage,
not exactly into wine, but into an alcoholic grape juice following that, there is another fermentation that
happens after you have strained this liquid made with pulp and skin. And that second fermentation is
very specific to wine. It is called the malolactic fermentation. If the purpose of the first one was to bring
up alcohol in the beverage, the purpose of the second fermentation is to mellow the acidity of the
beverage. It’s turning a malic acid, which is pretty tart and bright and in your face, into something way
more mellow, like a lactic acid. And it’s doing this thanks to bacteria that are also naturally present in
the wine. Now, in all honesty, I should have added wine yeast, and I should have added specific strains
of bacteria, but I wanted it to make it like the most traditional way, without adding anything. And it
worked, but I think it could have worked better if I had, you know, used the cheat code of like, buying
some some components online.
CK: So, what goes on once you finish that and the wine is in a barrel or whatever, what chemical
processes happen at that point
AA: After the second fermentation? (Uh, huh, yeah) usually the wine becomes stable more or less, and
then it just needs to age in order for the flavors to develop a bit more. But once you’ve done the second
fermentation, you can already drink the wine if you want to. But what I did was that, obviously I bottled
my wine, and then I created some beautiful labels. I call it the GI wine. I think I was pretty creative on
this one, and then I placed them on my shelf right here, and I think I still have two bottles left from that
experience. Now I can tell you that after 11 months of hard work, of research, of learning, of trials and
error, I had the chance to taste my own wine
CK: Okay, but I’m at the edge of my seat. So, was it vinegary? Was it drinkable? What was it?
AA: You’re right to mention vinegar, because if anything goes wrong during the winemaking process,
you will end up with a very pricey vinegar. So basically, my wine was a little cloudy. It did smell like
wine, and not just like alcoholic grape juice. In terms of flavor I think it was a mediocre wine, probably
two, three euros a bottle at the grocery store that I wouldn’t pay more for wine like this. But you know
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what? You know what it did to me. It almost made me cry. I don’t know. It’s like the connection with
something I never thought I would be able to make, and the fact that I created my own wine, it made
me emotional. Chris, I was this close to crying, okay, but because I was on camera, I didn’t cry, but the
intention was there.
CK: So, did you give birth to this wine? Is this like being a father for the first time?
AA: I wouldn’t go as far as calling it as my first child, just in case, he learns how to speak English and
stumble upon this recording. But it was pretty emotional, and if you can ever witness the wine making
process or even try it yourself, I would suggest you do this. I learned so much about grapes, and it also
made me a little smarter about fermentation, which is always helpful, because I’m also a baker, and I
know you are. You are a baker as well. So, a very eye-opening process, I would say.
CK: Alex, a 11-month lesson in making wine, and as usual, you created something out of almost
nothing, which is, I guess, what good cooks do the best. Alex, thank you so much.
AA: Thank you so much.
CK: That was Alex Ainouz host of Just a French Guy Cooking on YouTube. That’s it for this week’s
show. Please don’t forget you can hear more than 300 episodes of Milk Street Radio at our website,
milkstreetradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple podcast, Spotify and the I
Heart Radio app, you can find out more about Milk Street at 177 Milk street.com there, you can become
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orders from the Milk Street store. Can also learn about our latest book, Milk Street Back Roads Italy,
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at 177 Milk Street. We’ll be back next week, and thanks, as always, for listening.
Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GBH co-founder
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