Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale

AFFORDABILITY: My wife pulled in more money than I did this week, and she loves the whole Blue Moon aesthetic, so this was affordable as fuck. She used to love some beer they did, I think a honey brown they had maybe, because we’ve forgotten and bought the Belgian White like 17 times, and every time we do it, we drink it and are like, “Ewwww... this shit is nasty.” But she likes their lime summer or spring beer, and she was raised Mormon, which means they used to stack mad cans of food for Armageddon in the basement, so she is very concerned with how labels look. Sometimes I buy weird shit, like generic butter from an off-brand store, just because I know the label will freak her out. But she digs the Blue Moon labels, so whatever this cost at the store tonight, it wasn’t bad, because it was a Blue Moon beer, which I knew she’d like, and it had pumpkin, which we both like because we are festive thirtysomething with children we like to get in the spirit of things, but also a sex drive we like to ramp up with some alcohol, although I think her cycle might be rolling around, but then again, no shame in my game, I wear my red wings with pride. Anyways, as I looked at nice folks 12-packs to buy at the store with all three of my kids with me and no wife, since she was seeing a client, the cheapest of the nice section 12-packs were narrowed down to Red Stripe, this, and Stella Artois, which really wasn’t one of the cheapest three, but I was trying to talk myself into it. I settled on this because it was different, and I could write about it, thus enabling myself to waste time with internet writing and liver depletion, all at once. Our grand total going into checkout was four Reese’s peanut butter eggs from the Halloween display, a 12-pack of budding fauntleroy beer, and a couple Lifewaters for my kids. They always want Vitamin Waters, and if either Vitamin Water or Lifewater is on sale, I’ll let them get it once in a while. Then we went to the playground and I sat there while they played, and a kid on my soccer team named Carlos ran up, tagged me really hard in the lower back, and then ran off, yelling, “BYE COACH RAVEN!” He missed last week’s game because his family went to the White House for a tour. They don’t even speak english to each other, and they proudly toured the White House. It made me want to take my family, but I’m sure I’ve got some sort of file somewhere up there, and I’d hate to have them dust it off and think about it because I was trying to take my kids to tour the White House. I think I’ll just stick with teaching them politicians are all evil. 5 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: I have enjoyed drinking this smartly tonight and it has filled my bloodstream with a screwed and chopped stumble-swagger. The fall is a great time, with youth soccer where I trick my usual mix of Bad News Bears into kicking size 3 soccerballs in the correct direction, and I finally cut the whole yard, and we have bonfires on the back of the compound, hoping to see meteor showers slice the country sky. Times like this I wish I could play the fiddle like an Irish dude, or at least sing mountain songs, but instead I just freestyle my own specialized nonsense, channeling the thoughts of my ancestors bred into my molecules, triggered by the funk twang of my man Boogie Brown, or the pitter patter of my kids’ across the kitchen’s hardwood floor. We just reactivated the satellite radio in the house, for the NFL games for me and music for the kids and radio for the wife, and it has already driven me outside, back to the camper, because fall is not cold nor is it hot, and I can kick it in the camper free from the main house’s technological advances, but a slew of good records and empty beer bottles and assorted things tacked to the wall and an array of diecast cars and my sunburst picture frame of Waylon the dog and my red wrestling mask made by Sadie and Rosie down in Alabama and my wonderful ass 25 cents Willie Nelson velvet painting all surround me, amongst a ton of other things, and it is an environment that makes my gizzards feel good, so I do my thing, whatever I’ve convinced myself at that moment that thing exactly is. The Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale seems to not dam that thought flow even slightly, or muddy it up with some bullshit, which is all I ask from my intoxicants. 9 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: A bulbous obscene full moon is rising over a field of pumpkins where someone has left a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins there. First off, I cannot stand when my wife leaves the wheelbarrow just sitting around full of something, because it will sit there, get full of rainwater, and turn into tadpole-welcoming muck, that I have to dump eventually, and it weights 300 pounds, pushing it across the yard, feeling myself making the little snowball of heart attack inside my bloodstream. I was so angerfied by this habit that I stabbed a hole in our wheelbarrow with a deer leg one night underneath a for-real full moon while letting Hawkwind play across the backyard through my speaker sitting on a milk crate covered by a blue tarp. Except that's not true, actually I was mixing up some humus and red clay-heavy soil to plant a couple blueberry bushes, and accidentally stabbed a crack in the wheelbarrow with the shovel, but it was a mighty convenient hole to be sure. Nonetheless, beyond the highly personalized wheelbarrow issue this Blue Moon seasonal ale beer label dredges up inside of me, who the fuck harvests a field of pumpkins with a wheelbarrow? I mean, I've watched Mr. Majestyk nineteen times, and know in my heart it's the greatest Charles Bronson movie ever (except maybe that western where all he does is play the harmonica and fuck people up, including Jack Elam, who is highly underrated as a hipster pop culture reference), and he has a watermelon farm with Salma Hayek as his right hand ol' brown lady, and I have to figure, again in my heart, that a watermelon farm is just like a pumpkin farm, just a month ahead on the calendar, and you don't take a wheelbarrow into the field to harvest pumpkins. You hire a bunch of Mexicans who are friends with your girlfriend and you drive some trucks into the field, and you all harvest up the pumpkins and stack them in a giant three-sided shed, and then get sad when the bad guys come and shoot up your whole harvest with machine guns. And then you kick all their asses. 2 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: I am sure, from its pure prevalance, that Blue Moon Brewing Company is owned by something other than themselves, but I do not know the specifics, nor do I care to look it up. I am paranoid but not vengeful, so if they are owned by somewhere outside of themselves, good for them, because they probably got paid. Often times I wish I had gotten paid, but I hadn’t done anything deserving of a paycheck. It’s a not cool spot to be in, but I get there, and I will look around and be like, “Yo, fuck them, this is me, at least for now.” Anyways, an actual “blue moon” is a far rarer occurence than seeing a 12-pack of this beer at my store (blue moon is second full moon in one month’s time), so I have trouble trusting their drama. But they at least portend to be owned by themselves, just as the actual moon does as we blast missiles into it to see if ice chunks explode off its surface. The fact I can buy them in gas stations positioned conveniently off the interstate makes me distrust their wholesome We’s-a-Tiny-Brewery chilly chillness though. 2 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: I can’t complain. I mean I could, but who would listen? That’s the type of shit people say at work together. But honestly, I have no complaints for this beer, although I have no ringing endorsements of it either. It is a beer that most likely in my life I would buy at the store on the way to a get-together for my wife to drink while she talks to her friends, and I would try to find a dude amongst the men who didn’t annoy the fuck out of me, and there’d be one dude who fit that bill, and we’d stand around and drink beer at a rapid rate together, uncomfortably, because neither of us truly knew if the other was a stupid fuck like every other dude at the party. Eventually we’d know each other as solid bros, but by that point, we’d be so sick of all the lying-ass men with soft psychological tendencies that you couldn’t trust to twist a spark plug in a car that we’d stand around together quiet until late at night when we’d trade stories of when we were either addicted to meth or did a bunch of acid. But it would be the end of the night and time to round up the breaking down kids who should’ve gone to bed four hours ago, and the other dudes, all soft in the personality, would uncomfortably be standing around pretending they knew a third Hank Williams even existed. 2 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4 STARS!