Steak, Cont.

Jen tried Alton Brown’s Pan-Seared Rib-Eye method of cooking steaks last night; it worked. It involved flipping the steak more than once then putting it in the oven. Goober passed along this Serious Eats piece in f(l)avor of flipping more than once just the other day. Having not yet gotten a good char after using the sous vide immersion machine, I’m wondering about the utility of steaks in a sous vide; I’ve used an Iwatani and then also a Searzall but it’s possible I’m not doing it right.

More to come, obviously.

Aecht Schlenkerla Eiche Doppelbock

Today’s happy hour: Aecht Schlenkerla Eiche Doppelbock

Jen thinks: “Fall, earthy, burning leaves, firewood, summer camp. Distinctly smoky smell. Long smoky finish.”

Which is all a fancy way of saying what the guy at the beer store said: “It tastes like fuckin’ bacon.”

It’s fair to think of it as a bacon beer — a lot has to do with smell but also the feel on the palate. But it’s not as intensely smoky as other bacon beers — as smoky as you want it to be.

Jen notes the beer’s medium amber color. Jen also notes that there’s almost no head. Neither of us knows whether this matters.

Jen thinks this could be a session beer (actually, at 8 percent alcohol it wouldn’t fit that definition, but you could also add that this certainly doesn’t taste like it has 8% alcohol). Jen thinks that she could drink this beer with eggs — recommended if you like the taste of smoke in your alcohol — like a peaty scotch.

When Government Protects Businesses, Businesses Become Corrupt

The people fighting sensible liquor reform laws in New Jersey are the ones with the most to lose:

[T]he reforms in New Jersey have been met with protests from liquor retailers and wholesalers, who worry that new ways to buy alcohol threatens their livelihood.

. . .

The booze battles have caused an uptick in political spending from the industry. Lobbyists representing the beer and wine industry spent $640,500 in New Jersey last year, up by 15% from the $556,900 spent in 2010, according to an analysis of state Election Law Enforcement Commission records. The industry also made $500,325 in contributions to individual lawmakers and state political committees last year, the records show.

The largest chunk of the lobbying money was spent by associations representing liquor retailers and wholesalers.

Wine In Supermarkets

If you’ve ever traveled to a state that doesn’t have some goofy post-Prohibition-era restriction on selling hooch in grocery stores, you know what a thrill it can be. People in New York are trying to allow supermarkets to sell wine, a cause that doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the zero-sum world of commercial entities arguing over who stands to make or lose money. In short, New York wine makers want to sell more of their product while mom-and-pop liquor stores want to restrict other businesses.

The idea that it’s more convenient and probably cheaper for a consumer to be able to go into a supermarket and buy wine doesn’t seem to come up. Or at least “consumers” don’t in and of themselves constitute a constituency that anyone wants to lobby for. Sure, we feel “bad” for the mom-and-pop liquor stores, but the role of government isn’t or shouldn’t be to prop up certain storeowners.

The frustrating thing is that most of the reporting about this issue tends to be skewed toward the urban liquor store owners, where there’s a built-in Shop Around The Corner good guy/bad guy narrative. You don’t get the other side of the story, where people who live in rural areas might actually benefit from having more than one place to buy hooch within however many miles.

But even if you focus on the urban storeowners’ arguments, there’s a logical inconsistency:

[The owner of a] wine shop [who] has run wine stores in Little Italy for more than 24 years, says letting supermarkets get into the wine business would push out small stores.

“They’ve already taken away the fishmongers, the butchers and the bakers — and now they want the wine people as well,” [he] said of supermarkets. “I don’t understand why they need more profit.”

He said he goes out of his way to stock New York area wines and that if given the chance, supermarkets wouldn’t. “I carry 30 wines from New York,” [he] said. “Supermarkets will sell the most generic crap they can make money off of. It will be a very pedestrian wine selection.”

Again, no one’s talking about the consumer — if supermarkets sell cheap “pedestrian” wine, doesn’t that open up the mom-and-pop stores to expand their selection? If supermarkets stock the big sellers, suddenly the mom-and-pop shelf space won’t have to be taken up with generic or otherwise pedestrian crap. I never understood this part in particular. And if you want to even playing fields, take the extra step and allow liquor stores to sell food — that way they could really cater to a high-ticket clientele . . .

Man, Oh, Manischewitz!

The hottest new varietal is moscato:

In the opening to the video to his new single, “Country Ass Nigga,” Nelly takes a healthy slug from a wine bottle, grimaces ever so slightly, and wipes his upper lip clean as he savors the fruit-juicey kiss of the first rapper-branded Moscato (“Freaky Muscato,” marketed by his hometown crew, the St. Lunatics). Moscato, if you didn’t know, is a white-wine varietal, and Mr. Hot in Herre isn’t its only notable partisan in the hip-hop firmament; it’s also been extolled by Drake, Soulja Boy, and Gucci Mane. Those plugs have accelerated a full-blown Moscato boom: According to Nielsen, sales grew about 73 percent in 2011 after doubling the previous year. It is the fastest-growing varietal in California — E.&J. Gallo, California’s top bulk winery, has introduced five new Moscato products over the last two years. Growers in California have been frantically planting Muscat grapes (the kind used in Moscato) to keep up with demand, marking the first known occasion in which rap has directly affected the biosphere.

The whole thing sort of reminds me of Manischewitz’s 1960s-1970s ad campaigns that targeted novice or beginning wine drinkers. (You can see tons of them at the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum; they’re a hoot.) Check out this one of Sammy Davis, Jr., for example:

Now if Gallo used Nelly as a spokesperson, the wine and spirits industry can finally atone for the sins of the Cristal people.