I don’t have a brand I would recommend, but I can say making your own extracts is extremely easy. Roughly chopping hazelnuts, toasting them, and adding them to a neutral vodka or glycerin would take maybe ten minutes and no special equipment. I went through an extract phase a while back and still have several, including a truly kickass coffee vodka.

Making it yourself isn’t fast, but I share your dislike of how hard it is to find unsweetened, reasonably priced extracts. I don’t want syrups, I like being able to control sugar content separate from additional flavors.

I do wonder how it would taste in comparison. I’ve never tasted hazelnut extract vs flavored coffee, creamer, or syrup, only ever in baked goods.

I suspect it’s just one of those weird cultural foibles. The US isn’t too exceptional among Western countries regarding moderate or binge drinking. It consumes meaningfully less alcohol per capita than Germany, France, Ireland, and the UK among others, on par with Sweden, Finland, and Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita. US alcoholism rates are about on par with Sweden, France, and Germany, some 25% lower than Ireland or the UK: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country

I didn’t thoroughly research those numbers, but they square with my anecdotal experience. Soda is where the serving size really fucks us up.

There is a trend in high end spirit sales in the US to sell 1 or 1.25oz pours, 30 and 38ml respectively. It’s more a cost saving measure, but I do like it. 30ml is enough to try something.

I always knew James Hoffman is the same kind of weird goblin thing as me, but now I have video evidence.

I’m finishing off my bag of Counter Culture Field Trip, which I will miss. It was Aeropress today, I’m out of V60 papers. I have about 20 grams left, great for a lazy morning at home, but maybe I’ll have someone over and share it.

Every frozen and defrosted non-dairy milk I’ve had (mostly almond I think) did end up grainy, but still usable. Freezing it for baking is still reasonable. The time to defrost it would bother me.

If your household drinks a lot of sweet coffee drinks, yes, make a big batch of oat milk syrup to extend the shelf life.

I would personally make a huge batch of congee with a ton of ginger, garlic, shallots, and if you eat meat chicken (chicken arroz caldo). I use coconut milk for rice porridge, but oat milk would be good. I’d portion it into pint containers and freeze them. It’s cheap, freezes well, and could easily use up as much milk as you’d like. To my palate it’s a huge upgrade on chicken noodle soup when I’m sick, so it’s good to have frozen in advance.

If you have occasion in the next few weeks, it would be good for flan or blancmange as a dessert. I’ve never made blancmange with oat milk but it’s usually nut flavored, so I’d expect that to work really well, probably better than dairy milk. It’s a good time in the northern hemisphere for fruit sauces, too, so fresh compotes are on the table, and maybe toasted almonds.

I don’t often get a chance to talk about it, but Lover in the Ice is a fascinating, well regarded module that dives directly into the sort of sexual horror you’ve correctly pointed out as way off all but the most extreme table.

I’m certain, to my bones, that I could run a life changing version of Lover in the Ice. It will never happen. Even my few players who have given me the green light on that sort of content would I suspect tap out pretty fast, and I don’t blame them. I don’t think most people who just play realize how far TTRPGs can go.

I’m okay with never running that story. I get a lot reading modules like that for perspective; when GMs recoil at the thought of running that content it shows them how much more vulnerable they, and their players, are to that sort of horror relative to a shoggoth in the basement. That should prompt them toward creativity in looking for or writing other scenarios.

I do wonder what proportion of people who buy modules like that play them.