Mason Jars

Mason jars are ideal for making bitters. They are non-reactive, food-safe, lidded (to prevent excessive evaporation), and clear (well, you can get other colors, but I like the clear ones). So I just went out and bought a few more, which is apparently a difficult task on New Years Day. The phrase "The City that Never Sleeps" apparently does not include New Years Day. I guess everyone is nursing their New Years Eve hangovers.

But luckily, there is a pharmacy not far from the apartment that is open, and they had 12oz jars, which are perfect. I don't plan to make large batches of bitters (some recipes call for entire 750ml bottles of vodka), and I really just need a place to store the extra liquid that won't fit in the dropper bottles. I'm using a couple of large jars for macerating (the fancy bitter-making term analogous to steeping when making tea), but these small jars should be much easier to store in a drawer or other dark and out-of-the-way spot.

Here is a picture of my two currently macerating batches, with the new empty jars in between. The jar on the left is the "Essence of Gin" (or maybe I will call it "Insta-gin," depending on how good it is). The jar on the right is just Gentian root. I think I may have made too much of that one...

Homemade Bitters

In April, my wife and I (and our pets) moved from Schenectady to Brooklyn so I could take a new job with Google. Unfortunately, my beer brewing equipment could not accompany us on this journey.

To put this into perspective, I've been brewing beer since late 2008. We moved in early 2013. That's about four and a half years. It was my main hobby, at least through the warmer months.

Luckily, my awesome wife noticed that I'd lost my main hobby, and came up with a replacement. For Christmas she gave me a binder with about twenty recipes for homemade bitters, along with some dropper bottles and Gentian root (more on this later).

Recently, I've been getting more into trying bitters. There is a kitchen store not far from our apartment that has a large selection. Of course they have the standards (Angostura and Peychaud's), but they also have a large number of less well-known items. At least, they are to those of us new to the bittering world. I've purchased a few bottles from them, but each is around $20, which is a little beyond my impulse purchase price. Especially for a bottle smaller than my hand.

So, coming back around, my wife decided that homemade bitters might be a good substitute for beer brewing while we are living in an apartment. Her recipe book, assembled from Google searches, came with a few easy recipes and a few complex ones. I, of course, chose not to follow any of them (yet). To me, recipes are for inspiration.

But before I describe my current concoctions, I will cover the bittering base ingredients, as I've discovered from various search queries. I do not yet know much about these herbs and spices, beyond what the packages say and how they smell:

• Angelica root: Smells sweet, like a picturesque morning on the shore of a mountain lake, condensed into something that looks like sawdust.
• Cinchona bark: A very mild smell, like peppery wood. This is the main flavoring in Tonic water (quinine).
• Gentian root: Seems to be the most common modern bittering agent (similar to how hops replaced virtually everything else used for bittering beer). Smells like peppery wood, but much stronger than Cinchona bark.
• Quassia chips: Smells very clean, mixed with something like a Tibetan store that burns incense, but very weak.
• Wormwood: Smells like chamomile tea.

And, of course, there needs to be some kind of liquid. I am using Spirytus grain alcohol (96% ABV) because I could not find overproof vodka at the local liquor store. But they had this, and I think I can mix it with vodka if I want something in between. The higher the alcohol content, the more efficient (fast) the flavor extraction from the flavoring ingredients.

My first batch is just Gentian root and Spirytus. A bunch of the recipes call for drops of Gentian extract, so I am making my own. I went with 200ml Spirytus with 15g Gentian root, ground up in my spice grinder. I expect it will need to sit for ~1 week, with daily agitation.

Because I could not wait, though, I am also making something I will call Essence of Gin, if it comes out well. I am reluctant to post the recipe because I have no idea how it will turn out, but hopefully anybody that finds it will read this paragraph first.
Ingredients:

• 50ml Grain Alcohol
• 1/2 tbsp (about 30) Dried Juniper Berries
• Pinch of Angelica Root Powder
• Pinch of Cinchona Bark Powder
• Pinch of Celery Seed
• 2 Fennel Seeds
• 1in² Fresh Orange Peel, with the pith scraped off

I plan to agitate this daily, and I expect it will be ready in ~2 weeks. But I honestly have no feel for making bitters yet, so please don't try this recipe unless you know what you're doing and it actually looks good to you. And if you do know what you're doing, please leave suggestions in the comments.

Oh, and something I have yet to see on bitter recipes: The reasons I chose the ingredients:

• Juniper berries: Because this is the main flavoring of Gin, and I want a bitter that I can add to vodka to make it taste reminiscent of gin, or add to gin to make it even more gin-ey.
• Angelica root: Because the package of Juniper berries said that they were a substitute for Angelica, and because the Angelica package said it adds some sweetness, and because it smelled good. I used very little because I am pretty sure it is also quite bitter.
• Cinchona bark: Because gin-and-tonic tastes good, and this might add a little bit of tonic flavor.
• Celery seed: Because I like them, and think it might add a clean flavor.
• Fennel seeds: I looked at a gin recipe, and it used licorice root to cover up any bitterness. I don't have licorice root, but fennel has an anise flavor. Hopefully this won't do much but add a hint in the background (I don't really like anise).
• Orange peel: The gin recipe also used orange peel, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. Hopefully a weak citrusey background flavor.

Scientific Theories

Earlier today, my sister-in-law asked me about science, and evolution specifically. She described how this morning, after going to church with her husband's family, she told her sister-in-law that she had some questions about how the bible fits with evolution. She used the phrase, "Since evolution is basically a fact." Her sister-in-law responded with, "It's really more of a theory."

As soon as I heard her say, even secondhand, "It's really more of a theory," I could feel myself starting to get worked up. As you can see, I haven't rambled in a long while (as I write this, I'm hoping that my blog hasn't been garbage-collected). But this brief conversation inspired me to compose a response.

The phrase, "It's really more of a theory," (and its cousin, "It's just a theory,") is evidence of a general misunderstanding of science. So I'm going to write a basic tutorial of the scientific method and how it produces theories.

So, for starters, here is a simplified version of the scientific method:

1. Observe an event.
2. Come up with a general rule that describes what you observed. It needs to predict the behavior of similar events that you have not yet observed. Call it a hypothesis.
3. Invent a way to test the predictions of your hypothesis.
4. Apply your test to one or more thus-untested events.
5. If you disproved your hypothesis, then that really sucks. You can give up and throw it out, or you can modify it to match your new observations and jump back to step 3.
6. If you get here, then congratulations, you may now call your hypothesis a theory!

Now let's try this out: I'm going to invent a theory (you may know of a similar one, some guy named Isaac Newton came up with it back in the late 1600s):

• Observation (1): I dropped a baseball, and it fell to the floor.
• Hypothesis (2): The floor possesses something which I will call gravity, which attracts baseballs.
• Test (3): I will drop another baseball (to make sure that this gravity affects all baseballs, and not just the first one), and a bowling ball (to make sure that gravity does not affect any other objects).
• Application (4): The second baseball also fell to the floor. Great, so far so good! But the bowling ball also fell... That means my hypothesis is either incomplete, or simply wrong.
• Modification (5): The floor possesses something which I will continue to call gravity, which attracts all objects.
• Test (3): I will drop a book and an egg. I can't test all objects, but at least I can be sure it will work for these.
• Application (4): The book fell to the ground. The egg did too, and it broke. That's interesting... I wonder if it would have broken if I dropped it from a smaller height, like half an inch?
• Modification (5): My hypothesis is accurate so far, but I could modify it to describe acceleration... Maybe tomorrow.
• Theory (6): Yay! I have just invented the theory of gravity!

You may notice that my theory is incomplete (it only says that the floor attracts objects, and it does not describe how that attraction affects things; do they fall at a constant rate? Do they accelerate? Do heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects?). That's fine. It only needs to describe my observations. It's now up to others to test with other floors, other objects, etc. They can expand my theory as necessary to fit their own observations.

So what does this mean? You may be familiar with gravity yourself. Is it a theory, or is it a fact? Or is it a law?

What's a law? In science, a law is a really old and well-proven theory (usually with some mathematical formulas attached to it). It has stood the test of time. No experiment has falsified (disproved) it. As for facts, that's a more interesting (i.e. difficult) distinction. Theories can be facts, but the problem is that if any experiment disproves the theory at any time in the future, then it must not have been a fact.

Gravity is all of these. It is a theory because it predicts the behavior of as-yet unobserved events, based on previous observations. It is also a law, because the theory has not been disproved after more than three hundred years. Based on this, it is safe to call gravity a fact.

But, if you drop a cantaloupe tomorrow and it does not fall, then you have just disproved the theory of gravity. That does not falsify all of the other observations about gravity up until now, though. Somebody will need to come up with a new theory that not only explains three hundred years of experiments proving gravity, it will also need to explain why your kooky cantaloupe floats.

So how does this relate to evolution and the bible? Well, I was hoping I could just stop here and let you extrapolate from the discussion about gravity so I wouldn't have to touch that topic. I strongly believe that religion is an extremely personal choice, and should therefore be extremely private. I don't like to talk about it, and I especially don't like the idea of one person telling another what to believe. I'm already about to step beyond my comfort zone. But here we go:

Evolution (driven by natural selection) is a theory. It was first described in detail by Charles Darwin about a hundred and fifty years ago. It provides a method for predicting how species came to be in their current form. Fossil evidence adds weight by showing the intermediate species that existed in the past. Until evolution was accepted by scientists, the prevailing theory was that all species were fixed at the time of creation, part of a divine plan that laid out all life on Earth.

So how could we disprove evolution? Scientists ask themselves this kind of question every day, about all sorts of different theories. A scientist's job is to look at a theory and try to figure out new ways to disprove it. Every time somebody fails to disprove a theory, the theory becomes stronger and closer to being considered a law; for example, NASA is still performing experiments to try to disprove parts of Einstein's theory of special relativity (take a look at LISA on Wikipedia).

But really, what would it take to disprove evolution? That's a hard question. The only thing I can think of would be to find a species that exists in multiple places, which could not have been transported from one place to the other. This is difficult on Earth, mostly because people move things around, but also because Pangaea and continental drift mess up the fossil record. But, for example, if the first ship from Earth to an Earth-like planet in another star system discovered Earth plants and animals, of identical species to those that exist here on Earth, that would disprove evolution as it currently exists.

What would that mean? We would need a new theory that explains why Earth life is all related to each other, and also how planet-X had the same types of life. Panspermia would be a start, but then perhaps evolution would be back in the game.

Before closing, I want to emphasize this point: Disproving evolution is a hard... not enough emphasis... HARD task. At this point, it is at about the same order of difficulty as disproving gravity. I would even say that we are past the point where it could be disproved completely; any contrary evidence would just be used to make minor modifications, resulting in a stronger theory.

So don't ever let somebody tell you, "Evolution is just a theory."

New Blog

I created a new blog, Recipes of a Hearty Chef, for recipes. I've been wanting to post more recipes recently, but felt that Ramblings of a Computer Guy was an odd place for them. I'm hoping that, paradoxically, having two blogs will encourage me to post more often on both.

Linux Mint 10

According to two articles on Linux Magazine, Linux Mint is the next big Linux distro. Taking the advice of the latter article ("Linux Mint 10: A Perfect 10?"), I decided to download the Linux Mint 10 install live DVD and give it a spin in a VirtualBox OSE virtual machine.

Unfortunately, it was quite possibly the most frustrating and dissappointing Linux live installer I have ever tried. I shall now enumerate the problems I encountered:

1. Metacity crashes

Or, at least, I think it was Metacity. The title bars would disappear from all open windows, and I could no longer change the window Z-order. I have seen this before, and it was repairable by restarting metacity. I cannot find a reliable sequence of actions to reproduce the problem, unfortunately.

Additionally, even the task bar would crash and restart itself, and I managed to crash the installer by choosing "Quit" from the first page.

2. No LVM

LVM is not installed in the live image, and the installer does not allow configuration of LVM. But even when I installed LVM using apt-get, the installer would not recognize the logical volumes I created. I can understand LVM configuration being a big task for an installer, but at least if it would recognize logical volumes, an advanced user could still set up the system properly.

3. Personal Information Page Broken

The installer page that takes personal information to create the first user refused to take any input in any of the text fields, either during or after the installation finished. By the way, I was very impressed by the installer collecting only the essentials and beginning the copying of the system while the rest of the information was collected. But then it stopped collecting information, and did not finish the install.

I was able to repair the install, but I would be surprised if many users would know or even think to manually repair a broken install. If such a user happens across this entry, here is how to make your system work if the installer fails before finishing:

Step 1: Put yourself into the installed system

Get a root prompt and set up a directory containing the new install:
$ sudo su
# cd /mnt
# mkdir root
# mount /dev/sda5 root
# cd root
# mount -t devtmpfs none dev
# mount -t proc none proc
# mount -t sysfs none sys
# mount /dev/sda1 boot
# mount /dev/sda6 home
# chroot .


Obviously, your partitions will likely be different. The above layout depends on a partition table that looks like this:
/dev/sda1 /boot
/dev/sda2 swap
/dev/sda3 [extended]
/dev/sda5 /
/dev/sda6 /home


Step 2: Create your user

Create a new user for yourself:
# useradd -d /home/jonathan -m -s /bin/bash -U jonathan
# usermod -a -G adm,dialout,cdrom,plugdev,lpadmin,admin,sambashare jonathan
# passwd jonathan


Step 3: Set up grub

Tell Grub to install itself. This is surprisingly easy with Ubuntu-based systems, as the update-grub2 command will do it all for you:
# update-grub2


You should now be able to reboot into your new system (don't forget to remove the disc).

4. Keyboard Layout Not Saved

I use the Dvorak keyboard layout because it feels like my fingers flow better than with the Qwerty layout. I can still use Qwerty, but it feels clumsy. So, when the installer gets to the keyboard layout page, I chose Dvorak. But it did not remember that choice when I booted into the new system, and instead was using the Qwerty layout.

Impressions

Once I had the system running, I really liked what they did with the menu (what I would call the Start menu if it was Windows). It has big icons for all of the important programs right on the first display, along with smaller choices for the other useful but less common programs. They realized something that most other environments have not yet: If you are using the system menu, you are not interacting with another program, so why not take advantage of the screen to display everything well?

I also liked the clean interface. From the boot splash screen to the standard set of sounds, everything is simple and clean, and seems to be inspired by Apple. The icon sets are attractive, and different enough from what you may be used to that they are actually worth looking at.

Conclusions

I will not be using Linux Mint 10 as my OS of choice. I was impressed with the concurrent install/extra setup info, and with the few pieces of the main system after I had it running, but my heart just wasn't in the exploration. Once I discovered that I would be unable to use LVM, I completely lost interest in actually using the system. LVM is to partitioning a hard drive as directories are to a completely flat filesystem, and I cannot live without it.

Perhaps I will try the Debian-based version, or Linux Mint 11 when it comes out, but I am quite satisfied with Kubuntu 10.04 LTS for now.

Oracle

I was browsing the Java API docs today and noticed that the Oracle favicon looks like the Eye of Sauron. Has anybody else noticed this?

Chili

I love chili. It's one of my favorite foods. The only problem, though, is that when I make it, I make a lot of it.

This isn't really a problem (I get to eat one of my favorite meals every day for the next two weeks!), except that once I've finished eating all of it, I'm so tired of it that I can't eat any more for a few months.

Anyway, that wasn't why I decided to post about chili. I figured that I've made it enough times to have a recipe that I'd like to share. It's based on my Mom's chili recipe, combined with some input from Alton Brown's chili recipe in The Big Chili and some input from my friend Matt.

This is the basic recipe, and I'll follow it with some options on how to augment it:

Ingredients:

The Beans

1 lb	Dry Black Beans
1 lb	Dry Red Kidney Beans
2	Bay Leaves
2 tsp	Kosher Salt
2-3 cloves	Garlic, sliced thickly
2-4	Dried chiles, sliced (optional)
~½ gallon	Water

1. Preheat the oven to 250° While it is heating...
2. Boil the water. While it is heating...
3. Sort the beans (remove any pebbles or weird-looking specimens)
4. Rinse the beans (a colander works well)
5. Place the beans in a large, oven-safe pot (I use a 2 gallon graniteware), along with the salt, bay leaves, chiles, and garlic.
6. Once the oven is hot and the water is boiling, pour just enough water over the beans to barely cover them.
7. Place the beans in the oven, covered, and set a timer for ~20 minutes.
8. When the timer goes off, check the beans. They will likely need some more water. Re-boil the remaining water (bonus points if you started heating it a couple minutes before the timer went off) and pour some more over the beans (again, just enough to cover them).
9. Set the timer for 30 minutes and repeat the previous step.
10. Set the timer for 30 minutes. When it goes off, the beans should be nearly done. Remove them from the oven and drain them (they will be cooked some more later).

The Chili

1-2	Large onions, diced
3-5 cloves	Garlic, crushed and chopped
½-1	7oz can of chipotle peppers
3	14.5oz cans of diced tomatoes, any style
1	6oz can of tomato paste
2	15.25oz cans of whole-kernel sweet corn
1-2	Fresh jalepeños, diced
1-2 tbsp	Dried oregano
½-1 tsp	Turmeric
~¼ cup	Chili powder
~½ tsp	MSG (optional)
~12 oz	Dark beer, preferably home brewed
~4 handfuls	Tortilla chips, crushed coarsly
	Salt & pepper to taste

1. Much of this procedure can be performed while the beans are cooking.
2. Preheat the oven to 300°
3. Sauté the onions and garlic. If you are using meat (see below), cook them in the rendered fat from the meat (augmenting with olive oil if necessary). If not using meat, cook in olive oil (no need to use extra virgin, it would be overpowered by everything else).
4. Dice the chipotle peppers.
5. Briefly toast the chili powder in a dry skillet, until fragrant.
6. Combine all ingredients except for the corn, in an oven-safe pot. The pot that the beans were cooked in should do nicely, once they are done and drained. Stir to combine. Add additional ingredients to taste, keeping in mind that the tortilla chips will give up quite a bit of salt as they disintegrate. Don't forget to include both the diced chipotles as well as some of the sauce from the can they came in.
7. Bake for 1 hour, covered.
8. Once removed from the oven, stir in the (drained) cans of corn.
9. Serve, generally over rice with some shredded cheddar on top.

Accents

Depending on whom I expect will be eating the chili, I may go either for a vegetarian or a con carne version.

For the vegetarian version, I will generally add another pound of dried beans (small red beans, navy beans, ...; whatever looks good), along with one more teaspoon of salt and another bay leaf. In the chili, a package of fake ground beef works well, but it generally disintegrates in the oven and provides only a hint of flavor. Tofu chunks also go well, but remember that they will not provide any real flavor, only absorb it. If you use tofu, you may need to add more of some of the other seasonings, especially chili powder. You may also want to drain the tofu first.

For chili con carne, I like to use 1-2 lbs of meat, an equal balance of ground chuck (80-85% lean) and ground pork. Ideally I would use equal portions each of ground chuck, pork, and lamb, but I can never find all three at the same time, so I have never tried it. Brown the meat before cooking the onions and garlic, then cook the onions and garlic in the fat that rendered out of the meat.

In my latest batch, I managed to get my hands on some ground lamb, but I did not find any ground pork. Combined, I had about 0.6 lbs of 80% lean ground chuck and 1.3 lbs of ground lamb. The chili came out quite well, except that it tasted very strongly of lamb. Next time I would discard some of the fat that rendered out of the meat, as I think that provided most of the lamb flavor, and there was quite a lot.