I generally prefer stemless. I had 4 stemless and 3 with stems (the ones I'm using for the whites - there were 4, but one broke), but the calf gifted me two red wine glass kits. Each kit was 2 each of a stemmed Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon glass.

I would never pay for stemmed glasses again, mostly for the same reasons you mention. They don't fit in the dishwasher nearly as easily, they break, they take up more space, they get knocked over.

I hate stemless wine glasses. So lowbrow. Not surprised the guy from Edmonton likes them, but the I feel like the guy from San Francisco is letting his people down

Not as sexy as the Cow's ongoing wine tasting, but our cheese tasting last night was pretty epic:



For the curious, here was the play by play from our pals at les amis du FROMAGE:



Everything was very tasty, and their box 'o stuff for two people could have fed four easily. Oh yeah, it was paired with wine from Blue Mountain.

I made a couple Center of the Galaxy tonight. That is a delicious cocktail. Man, that is delicious! Made it with the Bols raspberry liqueur as I didn't know whether Chambord would overpower the other flavours too much. Next time will have to do an A-B test to see which is better.

I don't mind Chambord in things, but would also be tempted to put in 50-75% of what some drink recipes call for. A little goes a long way.

But A/B testing drink recipes is always fun, if not a little dangerous. I'm trying something with muddled nasturtium flowers this weekend for a small dinner party. Getting that balance right could be interesting.

Yeah, I hear you. I really like Chambord normally, so I'm usually happy with the strong flavour, especially since most of the things I've used it in have been fairly simple recipes where it was a key component (e.g. vodka + Chambord + pineapple juice).

I also made a Twenty Seventy Swizzle. Only used a few dashes of the pimento dram, and that worked pretty well. Nice drink.

​​​​​​​Dangerous how? Just consuming too many because you try too many different variables in a sitting?

Exactly right.

For the big Tiki Do we had last year, we went from tasting 24 candidates down to 10 and then to the final 5, with another round of fine tuning. I think that was over four weekends but it's a bit of a blur.

Admittedly, we didn't each have full pours for all of those, but without labeling and careful notes, it could have gone really sideways.

Oof, yeah, that could get out of hand. I'm generally doing very simple tests of one thing, and my wife often helps me. For instance, when I first made a mai tai, I liked it, but felt it was a bit bitter. But I was using the bottled lemon and lime juices. So next time I got fresh lemons and limes and did an A-B test of fresh vs bottled (fresh is noticeably better).

Or I'll try the same cocktail with two different rums.

But generally limit myself to one or two variables at a sitting, so it's pretty controllable.

I'm also largely sticking to recipes at this point and just trying to iron out some simple things (fresh vs bottled juice, rum A vs rum B, etc; next one is Smirnoff vs Grey Goose in a few cocktails to see whether the price premium is worth it). Perhaps if I start to get more creative and come up with my own things, the testing will get more complicated.

So when y'all inviting me over for rum cocktails?

If I leave now I can be there in.... 14 days.

I keep wondering the same, in the direction of Bohemian1, who definitely has a better setup for entertaining than I do at my 1,000 sqft apartment (well, 1,070 or something like that), especially taking social distancing in to account

But I'd be up for hosting a pico-Do. You pooh-poohed the idea of coming through YYC when I suggested it when you were last in the country though

Didn't work out then, but I'm hoping to be done my next quarantine by Thanksgiving. And I'm still aiming for a banked year and gifted SE, so if you give me a date, I'll buy a refundable ticket. 14+ day advance purchase preferred

I'm an unemployed bum who's pretty much always home these days, so you give me some dates

This all assumes there is no change to the quarantine requirements, such that entering Canada from the US is the same as entering from Europe.

But I'll be back in SF on the 25th, and I want to do family Thanksgiving 16 days later, so I'm pretty constrained on when I head North for quarantine. I'll discuss with family again, but I'm tempted to do a 30 day rate at a YVR property that works out to roughly the rent I'll no longer be paying.

On day 14 I'd fly to YYZ, do family stuff, and then fly back to YVR as my base. So beginning Tuesday-ish after Thanksgiving, I can pretty easily hop over to YYC, even on work nights, because I can keep my YVR hotel and get a YYC hotel*. Then I can work from whichever the next day. Weekends still work better for me, but YVR-YYC is a very different dinner/overnight hop than SFO-YYC.

Or you can come to YVR, since your bum schedule is a little more relaxed (though I suspect after being PDT+9, coming back to PDT will make my life a lot easier even if I stop working at noon).

And this is hypothetical enough that I have none of the aforementioned flights booked after FRA-SFO.

* Can I earn stay credit on two overlapping stays in one program? Or is this actually a situation where they'd lose my business because there's no point "double dipping", so I might as well pay for a stay in a different program?

Maybe we can take this offline and find a day.

I can, but can't bring by bar setup with me, so Bohemian1 has to host

Depends on the program. I think most technically say no, but may not prevent it in practice. I once did that with Hilton - got credit for being in HEL on my 14-day rate, also got credit for my one night in STO. But probably better asked in the specific hotel program forum.

For what it's worth, I think Adam should come to YVR.