I dunno, I've been using a Chemex for a couple years. I do the exact same thing the exact same way every morning, and it takes the same amount of time from start to finish as it used to take to brew a pot in my drip coffeemaker. But it tastes a gazillion times better. (That's a precision measurement, by the way.) In…

I'm a big fan of the aeropress, especially for pseudo-espresso. (I just don't have the cash to invest in a serious espresso hobby, and I love regular coffee anyway.) But for my money, the best cup of coffee I can make at home (or get at the cafe usually) is with a Chemex. Course we're getting into personal preference…

I don't keep my beans in the freezer but I do keep them in airtight canisters. As long as they're sealed and out of sunlight they seem to last weeks (if they make it that long).

Just wanna second everything you say. The difference between coffee brewed at the right temperature and coffee that's not is night and day; the difference between crazy expensive beans and a bag of vacuum-sealed beans from Costco, when both are brewed correctly, is a matter of gradation and personal taste.

I use a Capresso Infinity and I'm very happy with it. In general, you only need to spend a ton of money if you're making espresso, where you're paying for being able to do a ridiculously fine and even grind. If you're just making regular coffee in a french press/aeropress/chemex, etc., you can get a great burr grinder…

Have you done this with coffee? I'm with you on wine. I love wine, and after years of careful practice, (it's a hard job, but somebody's gotta do it), I can taste something blind and generally identify the grape/style. But if you put a half dozen wines in paper bags in front of me from all different price ranges,…

I usually do about 200 too. I think the experts say like 190-205 degrees, but you don't even have to get that specific. Boil some water, let it sit for a minute to cool off slightly while you grind your beans, and then have at. The important thing is just to get it hot—most drip makers never even hit 160 degrees, so…

If you're going to spend the money on a decent grinder and beans, I'd argue it's a waste to throw it in a drip coffee maker. Yeah, it will taste better than Maxwell House, but you will miss the most important factor in making good coffee—using water that's hot enough! Spend $20 on an aeropress/pour-over dripper/basic…

Be afraid. Once you get accustomed to the taste of a good, strong cup of coffee, made with good beans and brewed at the right temperature, you will have a very hard time enjoying most of those other coffee options. (They won't make you vomit, but you will realize the basic fact of 90% of coffee-making in this country:…

From an anal retentive Jonathan Lethem fan: Gun with Occasional Music was his first novel, not a later work. #corrections (Frankly, I'd argue his later works offer a lot more opportunity for slow-paced navel-gazing than noir action, but everybody else seems to love them, so it must just be me.)

Hear hear! I would only add one thing: what the fermentation process adds is not subtle. The type of yeast used to ferment the malt determnes what your beverage tastes like, just as much (if not more) as the type of malt or whatever else is in there. Skipping yeast entirely creates an entirely different-tasting thing…

I have to think this has to be the most profitable part of Yahoo! right now. I'm sure they still make decent money just on [Yahoo.com] being a popular home page, and I know plenty of people still use Yahoo mail. But fantasy football is where Yahoo has actually nailed it, and remains way, way ahead of everybody else,…

If I were buying a phone strictly for the look and feel of the OS, I would probably get a WP7 phone. Unfortunately, the joy of an interface—especially a well-designed interface!—fades pretty quickly. At some point, it will be about the apps I want to use, or that I can't use because they're not supported on WP7, or…

That's fantastic. I'm sure it's a ton of work, but consider all the stuff you could be doing with your time that would be less interesting than brewing (and that would produce less beer). Good luck to you, lemme know if you have a website anywhere, I'd love to check out your stuff when you get up and running.

He definitely said something about toasting malt, and given that he was proud enough of his toasted brown ale to give it a sassy name, he probably did something unique in his toasting process. Maybe English isn't his first language? Maybe "Chris Bowen" is a code name.

Amanda DeMatto, check your notes please. There is no way this guy said, "malt for flavor, hops for booze."

I was confused by the hops/malt line too. Has to be a misquote, right? No way that was uttered by a guy who built something like this.

Nope. Comcast is supposedly rolling out live TV service through its Xfinity app this year, but as far as I know, it's not live yet nationally. So this is just their OnDemand service.

Blatant favoritism! Unfair grapple against the Internet! (whatever that means.)

I suspect that is the distinction that the Comcast PR guy forgot to make: either we don't know where you might be streaming from on your laptop (because we are too dumb to check) so this counts against your cap, or this counts against your cap ONLY when you are streaming form someplace outside of your home network.