Photo, from L-R: Le Chouffe, Flying Dog, Weistephan 330 mL and Orval bottles lined up after weighing. In all my years of homebrewing, I’ve never worried about bottle bombs, i.e. when a bottle of carbonated home-brewed beer explodes, though in all those years I’ve always aged my beer and bottled to a standard 2.5 volumes […]
Greyhound Road Rewards offers great value
Greyhound Road Rewards may be the best value travel rewards program out there, yet it flies under the radar because it doesn’t have the high profile of its own credit cards and internet shopping portals. It offers plenty of free travel — companion passes, discounts, and free tickets — at a low entry point. Sign-up […]
Greyhound is underrated
If you’re like me and you consider getting the best possible price and route on trip tickets is a kind of game to “win”, then let me introduce you to the most undervalued choice on the travel market: Greyhound. Greyhound. I know, the name conjures up dingy bus stations, panhandlers, and slow rides shared with […]
Thank you for breakfast, England
Loaded with fried and fatty deliciousness, the Full English Breakfast is most definitely the father of the American diner breakfast. Both are widely available, often around the clock, and full of staples more filling than nutritious. In fact, the British seem to have a complex about their love of a good fry-up that equals the […]
Our Personal Best-of-Europe
How was Europe? I don’t know, how was your childhood? I’ve never had such trouble answering a question in the span of a few sentences. Possibly because I’ve never visited five very distinct countries in two weeks. Either way, now that we’re back from our grand tour, I feel like I need to sum it […]
Hopping cheaply across Europe by air and rail
Here’s some good news about your dream trip across Europe. With a little advanced planning, and carry-on luggage, you can get there and get around fairly affordably. After months of planning and procrastination, our full Europe itinerary is now booked. Here are the details of our grand tour with some super secret discount tips at the […]
Not a Train: Taking Greyhound NYC to Montreal
Take the bus to Montreal. It’s direct, it’s frequent, and it can be done last-minute. While riding the Jazz Train is still on my bucket list, we headed up to Montreal over the Fourth of July long weekend by Greyhound, which was relatively efficient and a great deal. Here are the details: Trip time: 8-9 […]
DIY: Dipstick for Measuring Water Level
Ever finish brewing your beer and add it to the fermenter, only to notice that the water level is way short of the mark? It happens to the best of us or at the least those of us that don’t have a brewpot with gradations etched on the inside. Making your own dipstick is the […]
Sleeper Train Bucket List: Norway and the Arctic Circle
![By Kabelleger / David Gubler (http://www.bahnbilder.ch) (Own work: http://bahnbilder.ch/picture/3359) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/hopstrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Nordland.png?resize=1170%2C550)
The Nordland Railway (or Northern Railway) runs between the historic city of Trondheim and the beautiful Northern town of Bodø. The 729 km. long railway crosses the Arctic Circle and takes you through stunning Norwegian scenery. The whole journey takes about 10 hours. The train departs twice a day, and also runs as a night […]
Albany, 2am
The Albany New York Greyhound station at 2am in the morning is a real Greyhound station, the kind your mother warned you about and which spawned the unfettered growth of Megabus and its ilk. People choose live poultry seatmates and faulty brakes to avoid its fluorescent glow. Despite its shortcomings, and the fact that the […]