Gear Patrol

All of our tasting notes to date have been focused on commercially available spirits, beers and wines. Recently, Sam Shipley of Shipley & Halmos fame invited us to try his latest batch of home brew, created in collaboration with Allison Sires of Thomas Sires. This BITTER A.S.S.S BEER is an English-style IPA and damn delicious. Our resident beer aficionado Chris Wright approached the subject in a slightly more intelligent manner.

Maybe you’ve heard about them — there’s no way you haven’t — but Google is pushing a new eyewear gadget poised to revolutionize(!) how we interact with technology. It’s called Google Glass, and its current form makes even the those Rec Specs wearers from your youth soccer days look like Steve McQueen. The internet backhanders have already made a Tumblr about it, god bless ‘em. But as awkward as they are today, chances are that tech’d up eyewear is here to stay. It’s up to us to deal with it. So we decided to show some initiative by drafting a few ground rules. And we’re counting on you to buy in.

Summer means slapping a coat of wax on your skis and sending them to the back of the gear closet. That is, unless you’re really stubborn (and somewhat deranged), like pro skiers Mike Douglas and Cody Townsend. Sick of waiting for the powder to start falling again, they took matters into their own hands. After…

Most of us are out of touch with our bodies. We clueless about calories, how much we’re walking in a day, or even how to check our own heart rate. Luckily, there’s a host of new fitness trackers that make training truly personal. Strap them onto your wrist or toss them in your pocket and they’ll track your every move — every step you take, every minute you sleep, every calorie you inhale or burn off. Read on for our five best bets for prying you off the couch — and tracking your efforts.

The iPad’s extreme portability is simultaneously glaringly obvious and overlooked in favor of its flashier tech wonders. The take-it-anywhere-ness of the iPad is also perhaps its biggest downside: we tend to treat it like the things it replaced, the books and magazines that we could toss without a care. That usually doesn’t work out well. Here are 30 great options — leather, wool, propped, or otherwise — that should keep your tablet ticking and looking good.

If you’re like us, you have a long list of gear you’d love to own. But reality (almost) always steps in, along with bank accounts and eagle-eyed spouses, and your gadget desires remain unfulfilled. “Want This, Get This” presents a lust-worthy piece of gear along with a more affordable alternative that scratches the same itch. Today we examine the Panerai Luminor Submersible 1950 and the Magrette Moana Pacific Professional.

Canadian-born Steve Dubbeldam, founder of Wilderness Collective, has been described as a “serial entrepreneur”, having begun multiple fashion collections and co-created an online magazine with his wife. His latest venture is Wilderness Collective, supplier of “Legendary Adventures for Men”. We sat down with Steve to discuss his approach to adventure, what men stand to gain from the trips he arranges and what went into starting a company built to satisfy man’s thirst for exploits.

Cool, moisture-rich dishes are perfectly refreshing in summer. Pulling ingredients from the fridge, or better yet, your backyard, and preparing them sans the uncomfortable added heat of an oven or stovetop is the ideal. In our cold dish primer, we examine five excellent cold-dish recipes, along with the “methodology” of preparing each type of food and optional accompaniments and alternatives to make your (picnic) table sing.

Around the country, where people can’t easily access a natural body of water, they’ll flock to fake ones for some relaxation, fun, and relief from the heat. This is the seasonal blessing and curse of the fortunate few who own — or have access to — a pool. If you fall into this category and are already bemoaning your hosting duties to come, may we remind you of the wise words of “Uncle” Ben Parker Voltaire, “with great power comes great responsibility”. Think that bowl of corn chips (“but they’re restaurant style!”) and playing some Jimmy Buffet from your puny laptop speakers answers the call? You are woefully mistaken.

It’s time to take your waterside shindigs to another plane. What we’re talking about is the kind of event that’ll haunt Charlie Sheen’s dreams and leave the neighborhood gabbing for decades. We’ve got your shopping list right here.

In this calm, three-minute video, we’re treated to a supreme visual experience by the aptly named Red Epic camera, a DSLR-sized rig capable of 5K resolution in every frame. We meet Phipps, a man who has lived in Tasmania his whole life, spending his time at a fishing shack that has housed his family for decades. The cabin sits on a quiet, trout-filled lake, and Phipps, genuine and wise, seems to be meant to inhabit that shack, to fish in that lake.

To begin: someone made a mistake in this assignment. I don’t like ciders. They’re sweet enough to send me into shock. They have a flatness that makes my tongue feel ashamed. They attract large numbers of bees. With those prejudices in mind, I gave Stella Artois’s new Cidre a taste.

Did you see this weekend’s forecast? The warm weather’s rolling in like a happiness-creating tide. Though it seems backwards, this is the perfect moment for us to wrap up our Summer Preview. Sure, we’re sad to see it go, but the entire premise was to get you prepped — and now it’s game time.

Summer Fridays are a thing to be put on a pedestal, the ultimate luxury for 9-to-5, Monday to Friday working stiffs. They’re a chance to bug out as soon as possible, to hit the road or jump a train to the beach, a cabin in the woods or some other resplendent getaway. In any case, we can’t just go into a summer Friday unprepared, men. We cannot go silently into that good mini vacation. What we need is a kit — the perfect gear for the perfect summer Friday getaway.