Events To Drink Beer By: The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

July 20, 2008 • 10:30 pm • POSTED BY Jim Walls

Last night, during a hot and steamy weekend spent camping, I decided to do a little stargazing with this cool new iPhone application Starmap. I like to think that one of the reasons my wife married me is because I can instantly point out the feint Orion nebula or the seven sisters of the Pleiades, but I know the real reason is because I have the strength of a musk ox tempered by the sensitive demeanor of a young Montgomery Clift. Anyways, this app makes me even more annoying if you happen to be standing with me in a field at 1 a.m.

As the moon crested over the trees (a beautiful haloed waning gibbous), it dawned on me that it was 39 years ago this weekend that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on our planet’s only non-manmade satellite.  So I toasted these brave men (and Michael Collins, the guy who hung back in the orbiter) with a couple of cold and frosties. Specifically, Sam Adams Summer Ale, which has been my summer beer of choice for several years now that Pete’s Wicked Summer Brew is increasingly hard to find. If I had planned better—and if it was still being produced—I would have popped the cap of one of these, which is probably my favorite beer bottle design of all time:

Apollo Lager seems to have been brewed by the Minnesota Brewing Company, which may no longer be around. But the design was by the esteemed Cahan & Associates, which incidentally has one of the ballsiest sites in our industry. 

Finally, to cap this post off, I share one of my prized possessions: a personalized Neil Armstrong autograph. Thanks to folks selling his signature on ebay, Mr. Armstrong rarely signs anymore, but I got this before the Internet even existed…and when I still harbored fantasies of being an astronaut. Those dreams went to hell thanks to lackluster college advising, 20/400 vision, and (surprise) too much beer, but the world gained another associate creative director—thus remaining the delicate balance around which our big blue marble revolves.