The 4th of July comes once a year, but your need to celebrate deliciously grilled BBQ, quench your thirst with fresh home-brewed beer, and maintain star-chef meat preparation with an essential knife set doesn’t end on with a Wednesday off work. Here is a look at 10 essential items that can boost your 4th of July holiday and well into the depths of summer.
Summer and good BBQ are a must, and there are plenty of units out there to choose from depending on your needs. The Fuego Professional F24C BBQ is particularly slick with its compact design and unique aesthetic. Of course, the most important thing is a grill’s quality, and with its ability to heat up to 500-degrees in five minutes, contain up to 20 burgers on its dual-burner surface, and maintain sturdy closure and even temperatures, the Fuego is a terrific choice for summer BBQ.
Sometimes we fill our kitchen space with things that look as good as they function, and there are a few knife sets as beautiful as the Deglon Meeting Knife Set. It is minimal with four knives — a 3-1/4-inch paring knife, 5-1/4-inch utility knife, 8-inch chef knife, and 8-3/4-inch slicer — and with the single-block design, fits elegantly and snuggly on your work space.
To keep your knives properly sharpened and cooking more efficient, the Work Sharp Culinary E5 Electric Knife Sharpener actually provides presets to deliver a specific shape and sharpness. There is a certain craft to sharpening a knife, with a need for gentle and consistent results. Traditional chefs have used belt-sharpening techniques, which the Work Sharp fashions its technology around. The MicroForce edge also further refines for vegetables and utility work.
Because this is the summer of 2018, does it not make sense to have a space in your cutting board to house and iPad? Enter the Bamboo iPad Cutting Board, the one-stop-shop to dice your ingredients while watching a movie — or, more practically, have a digital recipe right in front of you. A shield can be put in place to protect the iPad from a messy chef, and the cutting board also contains slots for additional knife placement.
Whether prepping the food, cooking the food, or eating the food, a home-brewed beer can complete the culinary experience. You don’t have to be an expert brewer with a kit like the Vessi Fermentor. Your beer can be ready from start to finish in as little as seven days, and with the pressurized container, there’s no need to carbonate and the brew doesn’t require bottle conditioning. If fully automated and self-contained brewing is what you’re looking for, the Vessi Fermentor is about as streamlined as it gets.
If you’ve dialed up the alcohol levels on your brew and you want to step up your beer pong game at the party, the definitive choice is the Bruu Moving Beer Pong Robot. What more can you say than “moving beer pong robot?!!” One detail worth pointing out is that your robot will not go off the edge of any open surface, so depending on where you’re setting up a game, options are varied outside or in.
An important part of summer festivities is doing nothing, which can be well spent in nap-luxury on the Cacoon Lullio Hanging Chair. The hammock can be placed inside or out, and if you don’t have a proper tree to hang from, a tripod can be setup to support over 400 pounds of weight. The Cacoon Lullio is designed to be open air and flexible, with ample size to stretch out.
When the sun goes down and you want a little extra light outdoors, or just can’t leave your chair and want to do some reading and don’t want to move, the variable functionality — remote control! — of the Gloster Ambient Outdoor Light has you covered. The Gloster is portable if need be, and contains different settings depending on how much light you prefer. The unit can also be suspended and lasts up to four hours on a charge.
With the mood-lighting set, music is the last step. Portable single-unit speakers are the thing right now, but there still is no replacement for traditional stereo set-ups. For a great balance between sound and convenient outdoor placement, one choice is the Polk Audio Atrium 6 speaker system. Even if you have a large group of people and desire a large sound space, the Polk’s pass the test, and any change of weather won’t damage the units even in a nasty rain storm. If you want a little more performance, they can be wall-mounted and left outside indefinitely.
An entire day of summer festivities at some point leads to pictures on the phone, but for a more dynamic, hands-off experience, turn to the world’s smallest 360 degree camera. The Luna 360 snaps photos and video, and with wi-fi connectivity, you can watch what you’re shooting through your phone. Gyro stabilization ensures steady images, all within one or two clicks of a button.
Your long summer days will never be boring as long as you have the right gadgets to fill the hours.