Business
The Next Biggest Thing in the Beer World Isn’t Necessarily Beer
The White Claw effect was felt in full force at this year’s Great American Beer Festival. While hard seltzers weren’t allowed on the show floor, there seemed to be an increased number of lighter alcohol options mixed among the bourbon barrel aged stouts and Belgian quads this year. And you can expect more in the year to come. While the IPA isn’t going anywhere, today’s alcohol consumer has different tastes than those of a few years ago. And that has some brewers nervous. “I’m worried the 21- to 29-year-old demographic, which is the volume alcohol-drinking demographic, is less excited about prioritizing craft beer than the 21- to 29-year-old of a decade ago,” says Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head. “There’s lots of reason why—the proliferation of wel...
How to Watch Week 6 NFL Games Live Online for Free—Without Cable
If there’s one thing the 2019 NFL season has taught us, it’s to take nothing for granted. Upsets are becoming regular occurrences and very few teams are out of contention for the post season at this point. Only the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers are undefeated as Week 6 kicks off. So keeping up with every team that could affect your favorite can be a Herculean effort. Trying to take it all in, but your cable or satellite system is showing a game you don’t care about? Don’t feel like fighting for a seat at the neighborhood sports bar? Fortunately, there are alternatives. Here’s a look at who’s playing this week—and several different options for viewing games. Which NFL teams are playing this week—and what channels are airing the games? It...
How a Bermuda Restaurant Is Using Its Menu to Support Local Reefs
According to research (and underscored, probably, by your Instagram feed), Americans are seeing the world in record numbers. And while spending money on travel and experiences instead of buying physical things has been shown to promote happiness, the impact it has on the environment is undeniable. As we start taking a harder look at our collective travel habits, hotel brands have begun examining their own practices, with some making both small and sweeping changes that have the potential to be impactful on a larger scale. Relais & Châteaux, the Paris-based association of luxury hotels and restaurants, is making strides globally, with environmentally focused initiatives that touch its more than 500 properties around the world. But the brand also encourages individual properties to take ...
Beyond the Rum Swizzle: Where to Find Bermuda’s Best Cocktails
Days after Hurricane Humberto swept through Bermuda in September, locals were still cleaning up the damage. Besides downing branches, the 120-mile-an-hour winds emptied trees of their fruit all over the island. As a result, cab drivers were handing out bananas to passengers; a deluge of avocados became guacamole at restaurants; and at one bar, Stefan Gitschner was slicing sour oranges to turn into oleo saccharum, an ingredient that would eventually go into his craft cocktails. Gitschner opened the Birdcage in June, along with two business partners (his sister and brother-in-law, Selange and Matthew Strong). The indoor/outdoor cocktail bar overlooking Hamilton Harbor is perched at the top of what was once a container building owned by Sweden’s Team Artemis—the structure a remnant from 2017,...
How to Make the Most of a Weekend in Bermuda
It usually happens about two hours into the ride—when you’re sitting on the Hampton Jitney, accompanied by what feels like the rest of Manhattan, stuck in a swell of traffic as you inch closer to the coast. That distinct feeling hits: There has to be an easier way to do a weekend at the beach. With a little more planning and a passport, there is. A British island territory with miles of soft sand beaches and clear blue water, Bermuda offers a mix of adventure (scuba diving around vibrant reefs and famous shipwrecks) and relaxation (rum cocktails and the aforementioned beaches). With direct flights that take under two hours from East Coast cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, you can get there faster than it takes to get to Montauk (or the Cape, or the Jersey Shore) on a summer F...
5 Beer Makers to Watch From 2019’s Great American Beer Festival
It’s getting harder and harder to stand out in the beer world. With big brewers getting bigger and the number of craft brewers now topping 7,500 (and another 2,000 to 3,000 in the planning stages), it’s no longer enough to make good beer or win a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). You’ve got to have a heaping dose of luck on your side to capture the loyalties of the beer world. Once earned, though, those loyalties can launch a business into the stratosphere. Local and regional brewers can find their products in demand throughout the country. And their new releases become events. So who’s on the verge of becoming the next big thing in beer? There’s a certain amount of guesswork with that, of course. Beer lovers can be finicky, and tastes change. But here are a handful of...
The Adverse Effects of Twitter’s ‘Inadvertent’ Advertising—Cyber Saturday
Twitter has been misusing the phone numbers and email addresses people provided expressly to secure their accounts for targeted advertising. The transgression, which Twitter described as “inadvertent” in a recent disclosure, reveals the insidious voracity of surveillance capitalism. Companies that make money by mining users’ personal information tend always to put profits before privacy. It’s simply the nature of the business. In Twitter’s case, the company used the information people provided for security reasons to match them against lists of contact information uploaded by marketers, allowing for the sale and display of targeted ads. Twitter said it stopped the practice on September 17th, although it declined to estimate how long the misuse had gone on, when it discovered the issue, or ...
Trump’s “micro-deal” with China
Global investors heaved a sigh of relief Friday at the sight of Donald Trump and Chinese vice premier Liu He shaking hands in the Oval Office. The two men, all smiles, announced a preliminary partial trade deal, which Trump said could be finalized as early as next month when he meets Chinese president Xi Jinping in Santiago, Chile. The bonhomie of the White House meeting belied the narrow scope—and vague terms—of the U.S.-China trade bargain. Friday’s “deal,” as described by the White House, calls for the U.S. to suspend an increase to 30% (up from the current 25%) in the tariff rate on $250 billion of Chinese imports slated to take effect Tuesday. In exchange, China pledged to increase purchases of U.S. agricultural products by $40-50 billion and adopt new measures on in...
A Champagne Concierge on Her Job and Your Next Trip to France
A great hotel concierge will book a driver, make a dinner reservation, and print out your boarding passes. But what if those recommendations and services went beyond where to eat and what to do? What if the concierge could tell you what type of Champagne you’ll like best? Meet Champagne concierge Lisa Legrand at the Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa in Hautvillers, France. She will direct you to the best of Champagne, including bookings at major producers like Dom Perignon, Veuve Clicquot, and Champagne Taittinger, as well as exclusive private houses that are closed to the public. But her duties go far beyond confirming your appointment. She’ll help you determine what type of sparkling wine you will like, give you tips on deciphering among vintages, grant you access to ancient cellars, and t...
Apple Response to Hong Kong Protests Overshadows macOS Catalina Release
For Apple, this week was supposed to be about its release of the long-awaited macOS Catalina operating system. Instead, the company found itself in hot water over protests in Hong Kong. Under pressure by Chinese government, Apple removed an app called HKmap.live from its App Store. That prompted supporters of the protest to criticize Apple for turning its back on them and siding with an authoritarian regime. Meanwhile, there were reports this week about New York law enforcement having the ability to crack encrypted iPhones. And in another move that drew complaints, Apple this week removed the Taiwanese flag emoji from the iOS 13 version it offers in Hong Kong. Read on for more on those headlines and others: Apple’s Hong Kong Protest Response Apple this week removed from its app store...
Chef Curtis Stone’s L.A. Restaurant Rotates Its Menu One Wine Region at a Time
At Los Angeles fine-dining restaurant Maude, owner-chef Curtis Stone serves transformative iterations of one ingredient or theme. “When I opened Maude in 2014, the idea was to capture a moment in time with monthly tasting menu experiences that were inspired by a single hyper-seasonal ingredient,” Stone recalls embarking each month on a new conquest—from pistachio, to tomato, to passion fruit. Constantly evolving and never repeating an ingredient (aside from truffles typically presented during winter), Stone sought to define Maude’s next course. “It became very clear to me that this same process could be applied to wine regions, allowing us the ability to dig deep into a specific locale to showcase the dishes, products, and wine that inform a place’s culinary heritage,” the Australian nativ...
Live Like Famed Novelist Sir Walter Scott’s in this 19th Century Mansion
In the Scottish Borders region, famed novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott built Abbotsford, a baronial estate where his life, hobbies, and historic memorabilia are on display. Scott found tranquility and inspiration at the countryside abode, set among lush woodlands and the River Tweed. Today, daily visitors wander the gardens or go nose to spine with his extensive library of books and antiques, which occupy the house in such vast quantity Scott affectionately dubbed it his “conundrum castle” or “flibbertigibbet of a house.” At night, travelers can stay at the adjacent Hope Scott Wing, where 19th-century life at Abbotsford can be truly emulated. Abbotsford The prolific writer is described by Britannica as “the master of a rich, ornate, seemingly effortless literary style t...
