Paola calls these “Kyle windows”. I’m always poking my nose in these clear plexiglass diamonds to see what’s going on beyond the green plywood barriers. Construction is fascinating and I think it brings out the little kid in all of us. My theory is that these windows have been put there for liability reasons so […]
Author: Kyle Bell
DIY: Super Nintendo nostalgia on your TV
I’m going to put this in Brewing, as in your own homebrew Super Nintendo, since it’s the best category I have for now. When we were in Montreal, we stumbled on this cafe that had a Super Nintendo with Super Mario for customers. It was the coolest idea, video games while you enjoy your coffee. […]
Honey Smacks Honey Brown Ale
The following recipe was of my own design for our Brewminaries cereal beer showcase, pouring mid-August. I chose Honey Smacks and decided to make a brown ale to showcase the cereal and for nostalgia reasons, since when I was in Syracuse we used to drink J.W. Dundee (Genesee) Honey Brown fairly often, it being a […]
Weekend Getaway to Storm King Art Center
Imagine you could book a semi-organized day trip outside New York without getting in a car or bus. Well, you can, with Metro-North Getaways, which offer round-trip on the train and discount museum and event tickets. We’ve been big fans of the Metro-North option for some time, having done the Farm Fresh tours twice, Dia:Beacon, […]
Classic camping with a Coleman briefcase stove (How-to)
We were planning a car camping trip over the July 4th and I had to get us a Coleman stove. That’s because few things cause as much pleasant nostalgia as using the same equipment we used as Boy Scouts: Eureka Timberline tents, Coleman lanterns, and Coleman stoves were our mainstays. As you may have noticed […]
We’re going camping
I have my briefcase, time for a July 4th weekend trip to the Adirondacks. More to come soon.
Japan’s 21st-century toilet technology
Never have I seen so many buttons in a bathroom stall, I thought as I took a quick pit stop after our 14-hour flight from New York to Tokyo. It turns the sleek international terminal of Narita Airport would not be the last place we’d see what I’d call “toilet technology”. Japan is indeed a […]
How to Take a Bath in Japan
Our Western stereotype of Japan is that everything there is small and more efficient, and while that isn’t entirely true, it does hold for the perplexing task of bathing in a Japanese bath. Believe it or not, bathing is not a straightforward exercise, and at the moment to you go bathe, we have found that […]
DIY: Roast Your Own Coffee (RYOC): Technique
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 […]