beer – Life In A Word

Make My Moon a Double

May’s flowers blooming from April’s showers have been a little hard to find this year. Maybe that’s because we haven’t had any showers. South Carolina just endured its fourth driest April in well over a century. We’re finally getting some moisture but it’s going to take a whole lot more to move us from “severe” to “moderate” on the drought scale. On the other hand May’s full moon was right on time… and it’s going to be right on time again.

A bookend is “one or two things occurring or located at either end of something else”. It’s not the sexiest of words but it’s entirely fitting for today’s topic. A full moon rose on May 1st and it’ll rise again on May 31st, like a pair of shiny silver dollar bookends. I think it’s mesmerizing to look at the full moon on a pitch-black night. And two full moons? Well that’s just double the pleasure.

May’s first full moon came with the label Flower Moon, to acknowledge “landscapes erupting into bloom”. No sir, not even close. If you ask me this year’s May 1 moon should’ve been named Weed Moon because weeds were about the only thing erupting around here. No matter what grows or doesn’t grow the rest of the month, May’s other full moon will be Blue Moon because that’s what we call the second one in a calendar month. You only get a Blue Moon ever two or three years.

I get a Blue Moon every two or three weeks, but now I’m talking about beer instead of Earth’s solo satellite. I’m not a big beer drinker but a Blue Moon adorned with its signature orange slice sure hits the spot after hot and sweaty yardwork. Molson-Coors has been brewing Blue Moon since 1995 and they’ve put several taste spins on it, like Honey Moon, Harvest Moon, and Full Moon. This time of year you can purchase a six of Rising Moon, which amps up the citrus flavors in anticipation of summer, but I’m still inclined to go with the original Blue.

Speaking of full moons, we should be happy ours is a perfect sphere (save for a few craters). The technology of the James Webb Space Telescope is teaching us a lot more about the other planets in our solar system. Neptune, the most distant of the eight (with apologies to little Pluto, kicked out of the club in 2006) has sixteen moons, but most of them look like orbiting shards instead of spheres. Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, made like a bowling ball back when it entered the planet’s gravitational pull, busting up a beautiful array of perfectly round orbs. Imagine if our moon looked like a shard instead of a ball. We wouldn’t be talking about full moons at all, let alone blue ones.

The “calendrical” Blue Moon from December 2009

The upcoming Blue Moon gets its name from an utter lack of imagination. I was hoping the word would refer to the moon itself, perhaps the result of some lunar bioluminescent algae like you see with an ocean red tide. Or maybe the blue would represent the tears of Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon, crying over some mythological misfortune. Instead, a “blue moon” is actually caused by Earth, in the rare occurrence where our forest fires or volcanoes generate atmospheric emissions which really do shade the moon blue. I’ve never seen this phenomenon before but even if I did, it probably wouldn’t come with a full moon. C’mon, we need a better name for “second full moon in a calendar month”. I propose “Déjà vu Moon”.

Speaking of déjà vu, you might have read about full moons in this blog before, in my post Sphere Elegance. It’s a little nostalgic to read something you wrote ten years ago. The focus back then was more on the science and less on the entertainment value (I’ve learned to flip-flop the two over the years since), but at least I was consistent with the definitions and my affection for the like-named beer. Hey, maybe I should address this topic every ten years. Then I could say I was writing about it, you know… once in a blue moon.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Licking My Lips

I wouldn’t normally be drawn to a company whose products target women. I’m pretty well stocked when it comes to lip balms, lotions, and shaving cream. But here comes EOS (“Evolution of Smooth”), a newish company using organic ingredients and bright, colorful packaging to entice its buyers. Now I’m enticed too because EOS just came out with an orange product. Or should I say, a product in an orange. You could say it’s something that only comes ’round once in a blue moon.

Evolution of Smooth may be trying to target men as well. Why else would they concoct a lip balm that tastes like Blue Moon? If you haven’t had so much as a sniff of beer, Blue Moon is an everyday man’s brew produced by the Canadian-American conglomerate Molson Coors. It’s a Belgian-style wheat beer: high on the wheat but not so much on the malted barley. And now it’s a flavor of EOS lip balm inside of a plastic orange.

If you order a Blue Moon off the menu, the bottle or glass should arrive garnished with an orange slice. It’s a nod to the orange peel component of the beer; an ingredient giving the witbier its subtle citrus flavor. I should know because I’ve had more Blue Moons than any other beer out there. When you live in Colorado as long as I did (almost 30 years) sooner or later you’ll tour the Molson Coors facility in Golden, just west of Denver. They bus you around town first (a quaint holdover from the era of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush) before depositing you at the doors of the rather industrial-looking facility.

When you get down to touring – walking through the massive brewery, seeing the step-by-step production process, and sort-of-but-not-really believing the beer’s water content flows straight from the nearby Colorado Rockies – you’ll get a better appreciation of just how much effort goes into a single bottle. But like most breweries a beer fan anticipates the final stop – the tasting room – where you’re offered brands and flavors not yet released to the public. It was here I discovered Blue Moon, back in 1995 when it was just a concept beer.

Fancy homes boast of well-stocked, temp-regulated walk-in wine cellars with dozens of the finest bottles on display. I boast of a 24″x 24″x 36″ below-counter drink cooler, purchased on sale at The Home Depot for $225. I may not have dozens of the finest bottles on display, but in my house you’ll always find a half-dozen bottles of Blue Moon at the ready.

To be clear, I’m any occasional beer drinker at best. I can make a six-pack last a month. The only time a beer really appeals to me is after an afternoon of hard, sweaty, gnat-filled yard work. I’ll come back into the house after hours of that kind of fun and Blue Moon beckons. And even if I consumed more than a half-dozen bottles a month I certainly wouldn’t be put off by the price. A six runs you $11.99 at Target.

I do know how good a beer can really taste. Make your way to Dublin, Ireland sometime, tour the downtown Guinness Storehouse brewery (which trumps the Molson Coors experience in every way imaginable), and have a fresh pint in the top floor tasting room as you gaze out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the fairy-tale surroundings below. You’ll never want to leave. You’ll also realize that Guinness you’ve been having in America doesn’t measure up to the one you can have on Irish soil.

Any beer connoisseur reading this post is laughing at my reverence to Blue Moon. It’s a product whose color, strength, and lack of history bears little resemblance to the storied lagers of the world. It’s like the cosmopolitan offerings among the “real” alcoholic drinks on the bar menu. Light on ingredients and better meant for women.

No, Blue Moon isn’t necessarily meant for women (I hope), but maybe EOS’ latest lip balm is a clever way to get them interested. It certainly got my attention, and the thought of the taste of Blue Moon on my lips the entire time I’m working outside sounds amazing. No bottle or glass to juggle while I run the lawn mower. No garnish of an orange slice necessary. $4.99 instead of $11.99. Good call, EOS. I’m in.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Blue Moon… is being turned into a lip balm”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Connection Protection

The college my wife attended many years ago was a small Midwestern campus, maybe twenty buildings in all. Because of the extreme winter temps, the college had the foresight to install tunnels between the primary buildings, allowing for warm, comfortable walks from say, the dorms to the central dining hall. It’s the same concept my wife and I discovered in Nuremberg, Germany last month, only this tunnel complex was on a much larger scale. And getting from Point A to Point B wasn’t its only intent.

You’ll find Nuremberg in the center of Bavaria, the forested southwest region of Germany. The city served as the final destination on our recent Viking River Cruise on the Danube. Like Salzburg, Austria a few days before, Nuremberg is known for its “Old City” area (now surrounded by modern-day sprawl). Once inside those towering protective walls, it’s like you’ve stepped back into the Middle Ages. If there’s a more preserved city of the period, with its moats, castles, towers, and bridges, I’m not aware of it.

A walking tour of Nuremberg is impressive enough with the history, architecture, and stories, but what trumps everything about it is what lies beneath the city. My wife and I signed up for an excursion called “Flavors of Nuremberg”, expecting to enjoy a culinary sampling of regional delights. Indeed we did. Our first stop was for a plate of Nuremberg’s famous white sausages (with a tall beer to wash them down). This could have been lunch alone, but we pressed on for more.

Our next stop was for Lebkuchen, or gingerbread. It’s even more famous than the white sausages. Here are two things to know about Nuremberg gingerbread. One, it contains no ginger. Two, it’s not nearly as sweet as its American counterpart (typical). Okay, let’s add a Three: Lebkuchen is absolutely delicious. We packed a pile of gingerbread cookies into our suitcases to give to family members (but most of them ended up in our own pantry).

Our final stop – of course -was at a Nuremberg brewery for several glasses of local beer. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how we would get to our beer Instead of just walking through the front door of Hausbrauerei Altstadthof, our guide took us to the top of a stone staircase, set right into the middle of a nondescript Nuremberg street. The stair was surrounded by modest iron rails but otherwise would’ve been something you’d walk by without pause. Our guide explained how the original brewery was located on this spot centuries ago, marked by a plaque in the street.

What followed might have been my favorite moment of the tour. Our guide excused himself to “go get the key”, so he could unlock the imposing door at the bottom of the stairs. The key was held by some nearby merchant and our guide had the credentials to borrow it. I find that charming, versus typing on a computer keypad or gaining the approval of a German guard. You just open the door with an old brass key.

Our guide returned, beckoned us down the stairs, opened the door, and away we went. Or should I say, down we went. Even after passing through the door fifteen feet below street level, we continued down what must’ve been the equivalent of three more floors of stairs. Our guide stayed behind to lock the door behind us, so we kind of descended on our own. The walls closed in and it got darker as we went. Suddenly beer was the last thing on my mind.

What followed was the equivalent of rats in a maze. Seriously, if I planned to gulp fresh air or glimpse daylight ever again, I was entirely dependent on the movements of our tour guide over the next forty-five minutes. He’d turn here or turn there, beckon us down one tunnel or push us through another, and he stopped several times to click on or click off the bare bulbs weakly lighting our way. We passed through several intersections where we could’ve spun off in half a dozen directions, to be hopelessly lost under the city forever. We saw what looked like dungeons and prison cells. Suddenly I really wanted a beer. Above ground.

Our guide stopped us would-be-spelunkers at several junctures to explain the fascinating history of Nuremberg’s miles-long network of hand-dug tunnels, originally used in the making of beer, then used as the city’s prison, and finally, remarkably, used to hide the thousands of residents the Nazis sought during WWII. It’s an amazing history I can’t begin to do justice in this post, but you can read more about it here. Suffice it to say, us tourists had a taste of what it’d be like to live in suddenly protective, seemingly endless tunnels for months on end. Not for the faint of heart.

At long last, we carefully ascended another long, irregular staircase, and our guide unlocked the final door at the top, where we burst into the sunshine and fresh air of Hausbrauerei Altstadthof‘s colorful outdoor biergarten. It was a surreal moment, being thrust back into modern-day civilization from the medieval tunnels below. The several beers that followed not only quenched my thirst but also calmed my nerves. This “flavors” city tour was unquestionably the most adventurous excursion of the entire river cruise.

There was a time, when we lived in Colorado, where my wife and I considered connecting our house to our nearby barn. We thought, why not string together a series of shipping containers below ground, to act as a tunnel to keep us warm during the frigid winter months? After our subterranean tour of Nuremberg, I wondered what we were thinking. Better to just hoof it through the snow than to get lost in the grounds of Colorado forever.