Today, we're breaking down everything you need to know about Oktoberfest beer. Plus:

• A bucket list item for cyclists: It's on a group of Scottish islands.
• Grand Seiko: Three of our favorite new fall watches.

The Complete Guide to Oktoberfest Beer

Every year as the seasons start to change, beer sellers swap easy drinking summer slammers for fall seasonals. Pumpkin beer, of course, gets most of the attention (and seems to come earlier every year). But Oktoberfest-style beers reign when it comes to a fall seasonal that beer drinkers want to reach for throughout the day and into the night. That said, landing on a universal definition of what exactly defines the style is much harder than picking up a bottle with Oktoberfest on the label.

Grand Seiko’s New Releases Are Some of My Fall Favorites

Many watch brands struggle with the same thing: striking a balance between offering the right number of distinct collections and the optimal number of references within each collection. Of course, watch companies — similar to those in many other consumer industries — are forced to continuously develop and offer new products in order to hold fast to notoriously fickle customer attention. Given the development cycle of a brand-new watch (often at least three years, sometimes much more) many of these new releases are simply new dial colors or slight aesthetic alterations. In watch industry parlance, this is often referred to as habillage, French for “dressing.”

Grand Seiko, for one, does engage in much habillage. However, I’m more forgiving in my judgment of this practice in the Japanese brand’s case for one simple reason: namely, that it makes some of the most stunning dials in the industry. Take these recently released Grand Seiko references, for example.

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What It’s Like to Cycle the Hebridean Way

BY ROBERT ANNIS

We stood at the base of the towering An Clisham — the highest in the Outer Hebrides — covered in clouds. We leaned on our bikes, steeling ourselves for what lay ahead. I was especially nervous, nursing an earlier injury I feared would get even worse with the additional strain. But this moment was why I’d traveled to this remote island chain off the coast of Scotland in the first place.

Cycling the famed Hebridean Way is a dream for many cyclists across the globe. This May, I finally tackled it — or at least a good chunk of it — with Wilderness Scotland. The Outer Hebrides are a rugged, scenic group of islands northwest of the Scottish mainland, spanning more than 130 miles from north to south, and home to about 27,000 full-time residents (and even more sheep). Don’t expect to find many large cities, save for Stornoway — most settlements are relatively tiny villages.