I had a roommate for the first time again in my early 30s after getting divorced. Looking back now I enjoyed it. I felt that I had to grow up and get my own place again after our lease was up. I think this was true, at the time I did have a two year old daughter and we were living illegally in a warehouse. Not the best way to raise a small child. However, if I could go back, I think I would have found another communal living space. My roommate on the other hand may have more mixed feeling about it given the screaming two year old and my constant cooking of monkfish… which was later barred from the menu.
I’ve stopped hosting as many dinner parties because accommodating diverse food preferences has become increasingly challenging. It’s a smaller factor compared to many mentioned in the article, but I thought it was worth adding.
And not just preference but allergies. I'm not sure why but it seems like the number and prevalence of food allergies has really gone up since the 1980s/1990s. Back then you didn't really worry much about food allergies when you were thinking about foods to serve at a party.
I have used this for several years and have had few issues. When I needed support for something (which was my fault) I received a response within a couple of hours.
I am nostalgic for this former age too, but I don’t want it back. I don’t lack for ports, swappable bays, or removable media. Sure, the Pismo could be upgraded via a new daughter card and the hard drive was easy to access but that’s because you needed to upgrade every year. Before my new M1 Macbook Air I had a 2012 Macbook Pro that lasted me about eight years. On another note: In the early 2000s I had a Lombard, 2400c, and Thinkpad 600. There is no doubt the 600 was the best built of the three. Both of the Mac’s felt cheap by comparison mostly due to their plastic (though, the Lombard screen was nicer than the 600.) I remember picking up the first aluminum unibody Macbook and thinking “finally something that is as nice as the 600!”
I think this is a worthy try but I am skeptical if it tastes anything like medieval beer. I imagine the malt is significantly different. Are we still using the same barley varieties as we did hundreds of years ago? Were they able to malt as efficiently? I also think the yeast would have been very different. Which he touches on. Even if you had the exact yeast you would need to know pitching rates. That said, what he created most likely tastes a lot better than what they had in the 1300s.
Using commercially malted barley was the first huge red flag in the article. I would expect Malting the barley would be hugely different from place to place with such limited options. I didn't see the article mention it at all.
Pitching rates don't effect the final flavor all that much. Pitching too little is a problem as it will take longer to ferment, giving wild yeast more time to sour/ruin the beer. But pitching too much yeast would not really result in much change in flavor in this case.
Malting is harnessing natural enzymes produced in germination, better malting is a side effect of faster sprouting (something they'd plausibly breed it for). Wild barley is still around, one could hybridize as early a variety as he wishes. Lambic beers are still produced on wild yeast too.
It would be hard to match an exact beer as a particular early brewer made, but seemingly easy to cover the entire spectrum of beers plausibly open to them. Then again, I have doubts they were consistent and reproducible with the kind of instruments they had.
I’d guess that individual brewers with years of experience could have produced remarkably consistent results and their apprentices would have picked up the skills. But every brewer would have produced different flavours. The weather conditions would have led to variations.
Not from what I understood from working at a brewery. They would have to eyeball the brewing temperatures and fermentation temperatures would not be constant either, so both sugar initial wort sugar content and yeast-defived flavours would be all over the place.
The malt definitely had less diastatic power, which is its ability to convert the starches to sugars during mash. They may have had some tricks of the trade, or they may have just ended up with less conversion. If it was the latter, you could manipulate your mash to emulate, but without knowing the goal you'd just be guessing. And the yeast, you're absolutely correct. And that's one of the biggest contributing factors in the finished product, especially with no hops involved.
Yeah. The author is careful to note the difference in yeast strains, equipment, water hardness, etc, but doesn't talk about the grain itself.
The main conclusion is how much more grain was used and how inefficient the procedure is compared to modern practices. Is it plausible that the grains of the time were just less starchy?
They didn’t have pitching rates, because they didn’t know what yeast was or have any idea of microbes. It was just the “essence” left over from beer making, and if they didn’t move it into the next barrel it didn’t work.
Both of these statements are true. Getting the right balance is something I struggle with. I am glad I traveled when I was younger. I couldn't repeat the same trips today. However, getting my BMW detailed at 24 was a waste, though it would be a waste today too.
I own two restaurants and several years ago ate out at upscale restaurants four times a week. One thing the article doesn't touch on is that the labor shortage has decreased the quality of service, which makes it less desirable to eat out. I have gone to several restaurants where the employees are on AirPods (one employee was even listening as they served me.) Many of the best servers and bartenders I know left the profession during the pandemic and have not come back. One may wonder if this due to the lack of pay keeping up with inflation but the team I have makes $35 to $42 an hour, which is up substantially from before the pandemic.
* Having AirPods in doesn't mean not listening. I just wear mine and have them on transparent. For particularly loud settings I use live listen.
* I would love if my server was allowed creature comforts like being able to listen to music or podcasts. Working in a restaurant that has the same 20 terrible songs on repeat is miserable. Service jobs are miserable, people suck, the less "masking" the employees do the better.
If the cost of labor is too high just get rid of the labor. It will be a hit with young people. The last thing I want is having someone waiting on me, if people weren't already used to it we wouldn't invented it again because it's weird. The best restaurant experiences I've had are seat yourself, get your own drinks, order on the website from the QR code at the table, and pick up your food from the window.
It's about the impression they make. To earn good tips, servers should be 100% focused and attentive to their customers. AirPods, even if not in use, imply that they are not paying full attention.
I would rather go the opposite route and adopt the model in Japan and other countries so we can finally be rid of tips. Restaurants all over the world exist without tips. The US is not a special case
I don't care about the staff asking me how my day is. I don't care how their day is going. I don't care about how "attentive" the staff is. I don't care if the staff has AirPods in. Replace the check ins with a call button. Familiarity with the menu for questions is all the interaction needed. Wait staff can be reduced, since they are just hanging out in the back unless called or serving food.
We can get rid of pretending the restaurant under paying the wait staff is the diners problem to be made up for with tips, because they need to employ people to talk to you while you're eating.
Extremely high end Michelin star places don't really have check ins, they just monitor you and do their explainers while they serve you. That is nice service, but most restaurants aren't at that level at all, and the prices at a Michelin place are so high that there is no need for a tip for the service.
Absolutely, there is a balance between attentiveness and just being annoying. Good servers know the difference, and seem to be there when you need them and don't bother you when you don't.
Look, this is true from the server side because people suck and use eating out as an excuse to decide whether someone deserves to make minimum wage based on their "performance" but on the tipper side I could not give two shits. As long as I get the food you get 25%. Same with Uber. I think it's gross to make someone dance for their supper. If I want to pay someone to give me attention and make me feel good I'll buy a different service.
At least in the UK, a stressful and busy but ultimately friendly job was converted into playing restriction police. I'm not surprised that a ton of people just decided to sack the job off after that.
Where are masking and vaccination being required outside of healthcare settings in the US or Europe? In fact, I just got back from a European event and the organizers were advised by their lawyer that they couldn't require vaccinations given the current rules in the host country.
(That said, I'm sympathetic to people with health issues that mean they feel they can't really participate in reopened society.)
I've definitely noticed worse service at many restaurants, but less commented-on seems to be worse food quality (lower quality ingredients and less consistent preparation) and a worse atmosphere (piles of takeout supplies in the dining room, ramshackle outdoor seating areas that were hastily built 3 years ago and never upgraded to something more permanent, etc.) both of which I am also seeing at many places I used to frequent.
I noticed a few incidents of weird service as things reopened but not so much the unprofessionalism you describe as somehow failing to sell things to paying customers (eg arriving slightly early and asking for a drink and being told no because of some silly reason). But my memory of those things is failing so perhaps it’s happening less.
$35-$42 an hour means absolutely nothing when median home prices are pushing past a million bucks in areas and you have no benefits like healthcare, retirement accounts, etc.
Good point. Brand new homes within 10 minutes of my places of business 485K. Single family homes from the early 2000s start around 425K. You can buy from fixer uppers for around 300K. Townhomes start around 250K and go to around 350K.
