Perhaps you love coffee and would like to experiment, you may be looking to replicate the fresh coffee you tried in some cafe, or you may simply be starting to question why you spend so much to buy roasted coffee from someone else. Coffee is an industrial product like beer, and also like beer, you […]
DIY: Roast Your Own Coffee (RYOC): Equipment
Roasting your own coffee is a fairly simple process that requires a minimum of finesse. Even better, time investment is only slightly more than making a batch of popcorn. Whether you’re looking to roast for your own daily consumption or to add flavor to a home-brewed stout or porter, here’s a primer on how to […]
In Japan, it’s always time for coffee
There is a well-founded stereotype of Japan as a place where people take their job seriously. One sip told me they take their coffee seriously here as well. For a country associated with green tea, this was a big surprise. There is no watery diner coffee here. If even grandparents make this strong a drink, […]
Norwegian Airlines Post-Mortem / Review
I wrote this after our trip to Europe and forgot to post it until now.We had a full-fare experience at a discount-fare price on Norwegian and I hope you will too. Norwegian Air competes on price and their planes are new, plus your seat still reclines. Your biggest hassle will be the ticket line prior […]
Breaking the rules: Grodziskie, a Polish smoked wheat beer
Of all the beers I’ve tried over my life, for better or worse, none is more indelibly stamped into my brain than the Kosciuszko Polish Smoked Wheat from Yards Brewing in Philadelphia. Nearly ten years later I still remember its intense smokiness. Brewed alongside their popular Ales of the Revolution series honoring Washington, Jefferson, and […]
DIY: Hand-Pump Beer Line Cleaner
We’ve all been served from a dirty draft line at some point, leaving us with a flat, soapy flavored beer lacking any of the usual hops “bite” or maltiness that we remember. Since I pieced together my minimalist kegging setup, I have left StarSan no-rinse sanitizer in the lines to avoid this, hoping that the […]
The Whole Enchilada, for Breakfast
Until an embarrassingly advanced age, I could not have told you what an enchilada was exactly. Thanks to the wildly popular local hippie-Tex Mex take-out place down the street from my childhood home, I knew it as a shifty pile of meat and various Mexican ingredients, possibly including rice and vegetables, all covered in gooey […]
Carlsberg Brewery, a simple surprise
Carlsberg, a beer known for its unobtrusive presence at many English pubs. Its name is vaguely German-sounding, yet this flagship brew is definitely not a typical malty Bavarian lager. Instead it’s clean and refreshing, yet nothing fancy. Which is fitting, because the Danes are not quite German and have a rather clean, refreshing, and well-designed […]
A cautious approach to bottle carbonation
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 […]