I am a very happy person right now. Here is why.

• Rub 1-1.5 lb. pork tenderloin with salt, pepper and beef bouillon (I use Better Than Bouillon paste; the regular stuff might do).
• Sear on high heat for ~30 seconds per side in olive oil. I cook with olive oil out of habit; other oils or even butter might work as well. Definitely don’t make the mistake of cooking with extra virgin.
• Transfer to a baking dish just coated with cream and a little water, cover with foil and cook in the oven at 260-275.
• Cook mushrooms in the frying pan to pick up all the good stuff that the tenderloin left behind. Transfer to the baking dish once they’re crispy.
• Let the tenderloin cook for about an hour and a half.
• At the end, prepare some crusty bread the way a good restaurant does. Cut off a thick chunk and then cut slices into the chunk that reach almost but not quite through. At the end the slices, which you can tear off, will be crispy on the surface and warm inside.

The usual problem with pork is how thoroughly you have to cook the meat. Pan frying pork does not work because by the time it is safe to eat the meat is dry, it’s chewy and the fat, which ought to be the best part, is an unchewable gristle.

I knew about slow cooking from my wife’s recipe for chicken in cream sauce, but I have never seen a cut of meat transformed like this. The meat came out tender enough to cut with a fork, fat and all. The mushrooms were coated in a seasoned mix of oil, juices and cream curd asking to be spread on the bread. Yum.

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Meanwhile, Erie Brewing should stop calling their Big Red a wee heavy ale until they mix in some peat-smoked barley malt. It has the alcohol to be a wee heavy, but so does an appletini.

***Update***

If you are going to try this recipe, follow the advice of many commenters and deglaze the pan with some booze before cooking the mushrooms. Naturally I recommend beer.

Somehow, while dozing off the effects of my Thanksgiving raclette, I missed the most important news yet regarding this blog’s favorite chemical.

Researchers believe they have identified a fundamental cause of aging, according to a study published this week in the journal Cell. The mechanism was previously found in fungus and has now been discovered in mice. It’s likely that the same process applies to humans, said the authors of the research, from Harvard.

The study found that DNA damage, which accrues as we age, decreases a cell’s ability to regulate which genes are turned on and off in particular settings. Though DNA damage speeds up aging, the actual cause is not the DNA damage but the lack of gene regulation. However, this lack of gene regulation, called epigenetics, may be reversible.

For a long time most experts assumed that a sort of unbreakable yin-yang relationship links aging and cancer. Researchers looking for a way to make cells live longer constantly ran into the problem that cancer happens when cells live too long. The perception was reinforced when attempts to prolong life by up-regulating a protein called telomerase, which protects cells from dying after they go through a given number of division cycles, repeatedly ran into cancer problems.

Via resveratrol, research into the sirtuin proteins shattered that misperception. They key, as described in the article, is that aging has less to do with cell death than it does with gene regulation. If we fix gene regulation, or reduce the rate that it slides into dysfunction, then at the cellular level we fight aging. It In fact the new research does better than that: cancer is also a disease of gene dysregulation. It turns out that the famous trade-off is one hundred eighty degrees wrong: if you upregulate DNA quality control then you fight aging and cancer at the same time. As it turns out, the list of other stuff that also starts to work better includes infectious diseases (i.e., we get less of them), mental productivity and cardiovascular fitness.

In fact researchers knew about the effect for decades. However, earlier studies accomplished longevity by cutting a rat’s dietary calories to a point that almost no human could bear. The break came when a team at Harvard guessed that the starvation benefit hinged on a DNA silencing protein called SirT1. When they tried a massive screen for SirT1-activating chemicals the #1 hit was resveratrol, a compound previously known only as a phenolic in red wine. Resveratrol made yeast live longer, it made worms live longer and it had the same effect on flies. Mice and rats followed. Then came a research boom that may never slow down.

It may seem silly that our bodies already have the machinery to live into a healthy old age but prioritize something else. Why do we essentially choose not to live as long as we could? The key insight is that resveratrol, like the starvation diet that it mimics, strongly inhibits the sex drive and reduces the lifetime reproductive output. Nature wants us to get busy, fast, which means that if we want our bodies to prioritize quality control over making whoopee we need to trick it into thinking that we are on the brink of death (dead animals don’t make babies, so the body activates survival mode). We can do that by actually almost starving to death, but it is nice to know that medical science could soon offer a plan B.

Since we had way too much traffic for me post post this on Tuesday, here is the beer I opened when terribly sad faces at FOX News announced that Obama had a mathematical lock on the election.

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It appears that not everybody is willing to concede that Bach’s Prelude to the Cello Suite #1 is the greatest piece of music written by man. In the interest of fairness I will post alternative suggestions from the comments, starting with Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations in 1981.

***Update***

Gould part two:

It’s a shame that the homebrewing more or less died when I got serious about finishing my PhD and starting a new postdoctoral position, still, at some point a guy has to get back in the saddle. Never mind that I’m sweating at 9 pm in shorts and a t-shirt. Fall is here so it’s time for a stout. Here’s the recipe:

2 cans dark malt syrup
1 can light malt syrup
8 oz. 80L crystal malt
4 oz. 20L crystal malt
4 oz. 120L crystal malt
16 oz. English chocolate malt
7 oz. Black patent malt
4 oz. Roasted barley
around 1/2 lb. dry malt powder
20 HBU Simcoe hops
20 HBU Target bittering hops
Plus the dry malt used for the Irish Ale yeast starter culture.

This is going to be a huge, pitch black beer that will hopefully turn out like the novelty stouts made by craft brewers like Southern Tier. This is the sort of product that I call an archive beer. While I’m brewing more moderate beers that lend themselves to daily drinking, the high alcohol content will let it age slowly into something worth bringing out for relatives and special occasions.

Open thread.

***Update***

Original gravity 1.083. It’s going to be a big’un.

Capsule review, Michelob Ultra:

Kidney-filtered river water. Some douchenozzle brought a case of this crap to my birthday bash, nobody went near it so now I have to get rid of the cans the old-fashioned way. Yech.

Capsule review, Southern Tier creme brulee stout:

Imagine soaking a box and a half of Count Chocula in a weakly-hopped stout. Or try making a half-and-half mix of Guiness and a case of caramel chews. As a general principle I always order beers that I haven’t tried before, but god was it a chore to get through this one. For some reason the cloying sweetness concentrates in the foam, making it painful even to get near enough to sip. I honestly want to know who approved this. If you’re old enough to drink it then you’re probably too old to enjoy Captain Crunch, Pixie Stix or a beer that should come with its own insulin shot. Do not order with food.

Chat about whatever.

***Update***

On an up note, Southern Tier’s Unearthly IPA is still the best beer made in the continental US.

Capsule reviews – Magic Hat Odd Notion Irish Red Ale; Southern Tier Heavy Weizen

I ordered the Magic Hat on the general principle of always trying something new.* It came across as unexpectedly thin for the amber color and substantial head, and the added-in spices were a bit forward for my taste. It reminded me of what would happen if I stirred cinnamon and nutmeg into a Yuengling Black & Tan.

Southern Tier’s Heavy Weizen sat on the other end of the spectrum. Instead of a thin mouth feel like most hefe’s, Heavy is relatively huge for a hefe-wiezen at 8% ABV and chewy in the mouth like a Belgian. The beer nonetheless has that shyness that turns me away from most hefe’s; I normally prefer the emphatic character of barley plus a healthy fistful of hops, yet the combination worked here. I would strongly recommend Heavy Weizen for people who a) don’t like hefe’s, especially (spit) Blue Moon, and b) don’t plan on putting away seven or eight like you can with Hoegarrten.

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(*) I make an exception for Southern Tier’s Un Earthly. New stuff will have to wait when that magic brew is on tap.

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Chat about whatever.

I’d never heard of it before and saw a variety pack, so I decided to try it.

Don’t buy it. The packaging is nice. The bottles are nice. But every single beer in the variety pack I bought tastes like the beer version of Boone’s Farm. Positively awful. It’s made by Miller, which I didn’t know, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I swear to god. The suckification of “beer.”

Dumped 8 bottles down the sink. Worth more in the recycle bin. If a beer lover is driving the truck, he’ll probably leave those bottles behind.

Update: I consider myself to be a bit of a beer connaisseur. My friends would disagree and tell me I am a beer snob. I think over the past few years, I’ve realized they’re right. I am a beer snob. Having said that, I live by the golden beer rule: If it tastes good to you, drink it. My former roommate swore by Michelob Ultra. I hate MU. But whatever. He liked it a lot, and he spent one helluva lot less enjoying his beer than I did!!

This is Tito Beveridge, carrying a bottle of the beverage that bears his name.

Tito Beveridge has been a fixture on the streets of Austin and Central Texas for years, nearly to the level of Leslie the transsexual mayoral candidate (image not safe for sensitive stomachs). He is a geologist and UT graduate who made flavored vodka as Christmas gifts for his friends. After having no luck finding financing, he leaped off the edge of a cliff in founding Texas’ first legal distillery, to the tune of $80,000 in debt, 12 maxed out credit cards, and two mortgages. In marketing his vodka, he took (and still takes, as far as I know) a very localized approach.

A geophysicist by trade, Beveridge’s idea of market research was to go into the nearest liquor store and ask them if they sold a lot of flavored vodka. “They told me they couldn’t give it away. They were going to throw rocks at the next guy who came in trying to sell them some.”

What Beveridge learned was that a high-quality vodka would sell much better than some candy-flavored knockoff.

He also learned to trust a woman’s taste:

“They told me that women are much more discriminating than men and that I should make something that would appeal to women.”

He began to see the wisdom in the advice when he noticed his female friends all drank either white wine or high-end vodka. “Women care more about quality than men. They don’t want to drink something that’s going to burn all the way down.”

Beveridge calls on his background as a geologist to explain the difference between men and women’s tastes. “I used to work in the oil fields and I’ve seen lots of guys sleeping on concrete. I’ve never seen a woman sleeping on concrete. Women will complain about the thread count in sheets. Guys are glad just to have sheets. So I thought there must be something to that. I decided that if I could make a vodka good enough for women, then it would certainly be good enough for men. That’s what I set out to do.”

Full disclosure. I have met Tito. I have toured his distillery and done a shot with him on separate occasions. That does nothing to discount the quality of his vodka. It is incredibly smooth, and one of the only vodkas I will drink straight. The advantage is it is about half the price of the other vodkas I consider in its class. If you don’t believe me, another (assumedly) impartial observer opines:

We’re going to go out on a limb and say Tito’s vodka is the smoothest we’ve ever tasted. That’s not to say there’s no better vodka out there, but between the taste and the price, which is an added bonus of a small company with low overhead and no importing costs, we’re Tito’s converts. We can’t think of any reason, barring two broken legs and a restraining order from the liquor store, why we won’t always have a bottle of Tito’s in our cabinet.

Tito’s won the double gold medal at the World Spirits Competition over 71 other vodkas after merely mailing a few bottles to the contest. A double gold is only presented when the spirit in question is the unanimous judges’ choice.

Texans love to support our own. Sometimes this stubbornness flies in the face of taste buds or common sense, but other times we get it right. When it comes to libations, we are doubly likely to prefer local. If you are in Texas, drink Tito’s with pride; if you hail from elsewhere and may have a couple of issues with Texans as a group, try not to hold that against Tito.

Scientific conferences are now happening inside World of Warcraft. That should help with travel costs, but on the downside it’s harder to get smashed and wake up in a competitor’s hotel room*.

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(*) Seriously, the bar is the most underrated part of a conference. Sex isn’t even an essential point – I missed out on that part, but I did get propositioned once, for a postdoc job. Both of us were Dan Rather plus eight (i.e., not sober) and we’d had one of those free-ranging, loopy scientific conversations that can’t happen in front of a poster or during the Q&A after a talk. That’s also why small conferences are more productive than the mega-attendance kind – most of the important people all go to the same bar.

Beer became the only legal alcohol in the United States. (Why today is not a national holiday baffles me.) On April 7, 1933, Prohibition was modified to allow beer with no more than 3.2% abv. It was the beginning of the end, as Prohibition was officially repealed on December 5th of the same year.

I have a friend who thinks Mich Ultra is an exceptional beer. I nearly get sick from even thinking about drinking it. So you can imagine how I took his recommendation to try Sam Adams Irish Red. I didn’t even know they MADE an Irish Red, so I decided to give it a try. My friend thinks it was his recommendation, so he’s proud of himself!! Beer Advocate gives it a B+. I’m giving it an A. Totally in agreement with the commenter:

Poured this beer into a beerclean glass and marveled at the appearance. Great translucent amber red with copious head and brussels lacing.

The aroma is one of maltiness. Toasty maults of toffee and caramel are the strongest. A tinge of hops hit late.

The same toffee and sweet caramel malts come through moderately in the taste. The mouthfeel is only a surprisingly moderate to thin. The beer does not have strong flavors but is quite flavorful, smooth and creamy.

I can honestly say that, other than Rickards Red (a Canadian brew that inexplicably gets a C+ from Beer Advocate) I haven’t tasted a better Irish Red. I drink it out of a flute glass, which enhances the flavor, in my opinion. I have a set of Samuel Adams glasses, but they’re more for marketing than anything else.

A very nice flavor. Wet the glass before pouring though to release the bubbles and the flavor. In fact, do that with any beer you drink. I’m certainly no beer expert, but I know this does enhance the flavor.

Note: If you want your beer to taste better, invest in some quality glasses. Most of you probably know this, but when good beers are brewed, chances are, the brewmaster will also develop a glass to go with it (that’s my experience with Belgian Ales, anyway.) They’re usually around $2.99 apiece at your better beer retailers. I have 16 beer glasses, all different, and all geared toward different styles of beer. But if you don’t have the budget to buy ‘em, you can’t go wrong by using a champagne flute. Those suckers can almost make Budweiser palatable!

Homebrewing goes on nonstop, although otherwise I’m mostly too busy to go near a blog. But since it’s Friday, and since I promised beer blogging when you guys voted us to the top in that crazy Wizbang contest, here is the latest brew that is just about done bottle fermenting.

White Labs Irish Ale yeast, prepped for 36 h. in a 1 l. starter culture

8 oz. 80L crystal malt
4 oz. 40L crystal malt
11 oz. chocolate malt
6 oz. black patent malt
4 oz. roasted barley
3 cans John Bull dark extract
20 BU mixed bittering hops
1/2 oz. cascade hops for aroma

The gravity reading was clearly wrong (1.055, ha) so I can’t say how big it is. But it’s BIG. The color is pitch black while secondary fermentation mellowed the hops from intolerable to something like a Lagunitas. The thinnish head comes from adding a packet of yeast nutrients in secondary, drying it out and increasing the alcohol, but for a guy who finds Guinness saccharine the crispness is worth it. One bottle takes me a long time to drink. Of course I bottled half in 22 oz. bottles; it’ll be fun to see how I get through those. Hic.

My next batch is an OG 1.075 pale ale with Cali ale yeast, but something feels off. Fermenting yeast usually rises fast and mostly exhausts itself in a week or so, but this one took a few days to get started and has gone on tepidly bubbling for over a week. Most likely I’m growing bacteria this time.

Question for the community: do Belgian breweries take some precaution against stealing yeast out of the bottom of their bottles? I’ve tried to culture that beautiful stuff twice and came up empty both times.

Also on the topic of Friday theme blogging, Tom Levenson’s Newton blog this week is sublime.

It’s 3:45 am. I’m looking at the CNN Web site. I notice a spelling error that annoys me.

But who cares? Welcome to December. By the way, I’m drinking a Don de Dieu by Unibroue. An incredible beer, made in Canada, 9% alcohol and made, of course, in the style of the Belgian Triples. Yum. From the Web site:

This smooth, exceptionally strong triple wheat ale offers a complex flavor that is slightly fruity, malty, nutty and yeasty, with a hint of unfiltered sake.

We recommend pairing it with grilled game meats, spicy Asian or Latin cuisine, ripened cheeses and charcuterie.

On another note, the hostage crisis is resolved. The Clintons called it off – or so the Freepers would have you believe, or whatever.

And, finally, Evel Knievel is dead.

Enjoying my first bottle from my batch #2, a medium porter made from a mix of extract and grains. So much for low expectations, that’s a pretty damn good beer. The gravity only dropped from .05 to .02, but the extra sugar and the grain residue makes a respectably rich beer with a fine head. A few of those will feel just right watching the Steelers game.

Next up: a scottish ale with some bonus amber dry malt and an extra half-plug of cascade hops is about done in the secondary fermenter. The wort seemed a touch bitter. More than a touch, but I like hops. As soon as that goes into bottles, and assuming that my wife doesn’t stage some sort of intervention to get the spare apartment space back, I’m practically drooling over a wee heavy kit from South Hills Brewing supply. Then it’s time to start trying my own recipes.

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News about brewing with genetics research yeast: a friend of a friend tells me that he didn’t notice any terrible flavors or deaths when he tried it. Look for updates some time early in the new year. As for the name, CDC Watch List Ale is growing on me. Kudos to everyone who participated.

I promised myself I wouldn’t drink on my vacation and get some stuff done around the house, play with the dogs, etc. I just went over to Kroger to pick up a couple things, and walked past this. How could I resist?

It’s Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and it was brewed to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the comedy legends. It’s 1:00 here now, but since I’ve been up since 5 (another thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do on vacation) I decided to go ahead and drink it. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not really great at describing beer, but this stuff is pretty good. For the aficionados out there, here is the description from Beer Advocate.

Dusty orange-gold with an abundance of fine, suspended bits. The pastel orange tinted, cream colored head is sticky enough to lay down a better than average amount of lace in chunky, concentric rings. A good look.

The nose, unfortunately, isn’t so good. It smells like lightly musty grain with a subtle whiff of English hops. I’m not sure that I want it to be more aromatic because what’s appreciated isn’t all that wonderful.

Things start out promisingly enough on the palate with a fruity, spicy hoppiness. Because of undermalting, the flavor deteriorates quickly to become harsh and mineral-like with a ragged, unsupported bitterness. The beer doesn’t feel flat in terms of carbonation, but flat in terms of flavor. There’s an echo of reasonable hop flavor on the finish, but it’s too little, too late.

I disagree completely. I didn’t see any bits, and the flavor lasts. Little to no head though, which is a downside, in my opinion.

Here’s the official Web site.

Added: By the way, the little blurb at the bottom of the bottle reads: “Tempered over burning witches.” Heh.