War and Pax

The clock hands crept slowly past ten and lagged intolerably thereafter. The rapid beating of your heart, telling off the minutes, brought eleven finally very near. Then the clock, your heart, all the world, seemed to stand still. The great moment was there. Would the announcing cannon speak? Such a terrible silence as the world kept during that supreme moment of suspense! It was the quintessence of all the moral torture of four nightmare years.

And then…like a shock within your own body it came, the first solemn proclamation of the cannon, shaking the windows, the houses, the very sky, with its news. The war was over. The accursed guns had ceased tearing to pieces our husbands and our sons and our fathers…

…I think there can never have been such a day before, such a day of pure thanksgiving and joy for every one. For the emotion was so intense that, during the priceless hours of that first day, it admitted no other. Human hearts could hold no more than that great gladness.

Dorothy Canfield, The Day of Glory (1919)

It was 90 years ago today – on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – that the guns were silenced. Peace, however fleeting or illusory, was to be found at last as The Great War, World War I, came officially to a close.

Though Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s novel The Day of Glory was fiction*, the sentiment  expressed was both real and widespread. It was joy – but an exhausted joy, relief from a brutal, devastating, and all-consuming four year ordeal.

Siegfried Sassoon, who is among those Poets of the First World War memorialized at Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner, wrote of this Armistice Day in “Every One Sang.”

Every one suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom 

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

Every one’s voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away…Oh, but Every One

Was a bird, and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Those feelings were echoed again by Nobel Prize winning writer John Galsworthy in the closing lines of “A Green Hill Far Away” (a chapter from his 1920 novel, Tatterdemalion):

Man is a fighting animal, with sense of the ridiculous enough to know that he is a fool to fight, but not sense of the sublime enough to stop him. Ah, well! we have peace!

It is happiness greater than I have known for four years and four months, to lie here and let that thought go on its wings, quiet and free as the wind stealing soft from the sea, and blessed as the sunlight on this green hill.

The deliverance that came on this day of glory may have been met with some measure of joy; that it did not bring with it an enduring optimism can hardly be surprising. What optimism there may have been when the war began was forever extinguished. The sheer numbers associated with the war are terrible to ponder and difficult to fathom:  By some estimates, the war caused 20 million civilian and military deaths. There were single days with death tolls in the tens of thousands. 

“Across the lives of those who survived the war stretched the long shadow of the millions who did not,” writes James J. Sheehan in Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?. “Serbia lost more than a third of its army, Turkey and Romania a quarter of theirs, and Bulgaria more than a fifth.”

On July 31, 1914, the graduates of the French military academy at St. Cyr received their commissions. Caught up in the fervor of the moment, Gaston Voizard, one of the freshly minted subalterns, called on his classmates to swear that they would go into battle wearing their dress uniforms, complete with plumed hats and white gloves. Over the next few weeks, the splendidly attired St. Cyrians fell by the score as they led their men against German machine guns; not one member of the class of 1914 would survive the war.

It was a war of dubious origins, fueled by fatal missteps and miscalculations, sustained by some tragic combination of hubris and surrender to war’s self-perpetuating character. It was neither the war its participants wanted nor the one they expected. It was not, as hope demanded, the “war to end all wars,” but a war that foretold of greater horrors to come. 

On this Veteran’s Day, we honor our military veterans. The fallen, and those left standing. The veterans not just of World War I, but of all conflicts. We applaud their courage, and venerate their sacrifice – as well we should. But as we recall the holiday’s origins as Armistice Day, we embrace not war but the struggle for peace.

It is a somber day for a beer, but a fine one nonetheless. Brouwerij Sint-Jozef’s Pax Pilsner – first brewed in 1937, as the transient truce won on this day in 1918 was beginning to crumble – is crisp, refreshing, but not unguarded in its hopeful clarity. It offers, in the words of late beer connoisseur Michael Jackson, an “almost stony, austere, dryness.” With solemn restraint, we drink to peace.

*And thus attributed to Dorothy Canfield, as was her practice for fictional works. An educator, social activist, and prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction, Dorothy Canfield Fisher is best known as the namesake of a children’s book award, and most notable perhaps for bringing the Montessori Method of teaching to the United States.

NOTE: All war images are taken with implied consent from Wikimedia Commons, and are in the public domain.

Galloping Gertie and three-legged Tubby

As suggested in proverb, it’s best not to bite the hand that feeds you. 

As suggested by the lessons of this day in 1940, it’s also best not to bite the hand that is attempting to rescue you.

Five days earlier at the University of Washington, wind tunnel tests on a 54-foot long scale model of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had offered possible solutions to the seemingly minor – if disquieting – design flaws that had been evident since the world’s third longest suspension bridge opened to traffic on July 1 of that year. Conceived by renowned engineer Leon Moisseif, the bridge was expected to withstand winds up to 120 mph – but it was quickly apparent that even light winds could cause waves in the roadway.

As recounted in the Washington State Department of Transportation’s history of the bridge, “Thrill-seekers drove to the Narrows from miles around when the ripples started.”

Some motorists became "seasick" and avoided using the bridge. But, for adventurous spirits the bridge became an amusement ride. Drivers crossing the span at times saw a car in front of them suddenly disappear into the trough of a wave. Moments later it reappeared as the roadway rose. According to one report, a couple of times drivers experienced waves 10 feet high.

It wasn’t long before the undulating bridge earned the nickname “Galloping Gertie,” but not even the wind tunnel tests led by Professor F.B. Farquharson predicted what was to come. Shortly before 10:00 a.m. on November 7, the bridge was closed to traffic, as 40 mph winds were causing more frequent oscillations than usual. Still, the bridge had survived stronger winds before. While driving conditions may have been unsafe, there was little reason to expect the dramatic twisting that would lead to the bridge’s stunning collapse.

Quoted in Richard Scott’s In the Wake of Tacoma, Farquharson traces the unfolding calamity:

While checking the frequency from a position on the roadway to the north of the toll plaza a few minutes later, a violent change in motion was noted. This change appeared to take place without any intermediate stages, and with such extreme violence that the span appeared to be about to roll completely over. The most startling condition arose out of the fact that from a line of sight very nearly parallel to the bridge the upper side of the roadway was visible while what appeared to be a nearly perpendicular view of the bottom of the roadway was offered on the Tacoma side. The motion, which a moment before had involved a number of waves (nine or ten), had shifted almost instantly to two.

“Moments earlier,” it is noted in Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori’s book Why Buildings Fall Down (not to be confused with Salvadori’s later work, Why Buildings Stand Up), “a newspaperman, Leonard Coatsworth, trying to cross the bridge, had to stop his car near the quarter point of the span when the motions made it impossible to continue further.”

As the bridge pitched violently, the car careened across the pavement, and Coatsworth, jumping out of it, was thrown to the pavement. He tried to get up and run back off the bridge but was forced to crawl on all fours, while struggling not to fall over the edge because of the wild gyrations of the deck. Suddenly Coatsworth remembered leaving his daughter’s cocker spaniel in the car and tried to go back, but by that time the motion was so violent that he couldn’t. When he finally reached the shore, his hands and knees were bruised and bloody. Arthur Hagen and Rudy Jacox had also just driven onto the bridge when it began to sway. They jumped out of their truck and crawled to one of the towers, where they were helped to safety by the workmen as (in the words of Professor Farquharson) the bridge crumbled beneath them “with huge chunks of concrete flying into the air like popcorn.”

At is at this point that the old axiom could use some updating. Out of compassion or compulsion, the good professor made a daring run for Coatsworth’s car in an effort to rescue what Scott less forgivingly refers to as “a recalcitrant dog.” By varying accounts, Farquharson was unable to reach the car, or not only reached the car but briefly attempted to drive it to safety. By his own account, he merely opened the car door and tried to rescue the dog. Sadly, the recalcitrant – or more likely petrified – three-legged pooch, Tubby snapped at the hand of his emancipator. 

Forced to abandon his efforts, Farquharson scurried to safety as cables snapped and the roadway rapidly fell and rose again beneath his feet. The professor narrowly escaped the bridge’s capitulation to the forces of nature. Three-legged Tubby was not so lucky; though his bones were never recovered from the wreckage, he most certainly plummeted to his death as the bridge disintegrated into the Puget Sound.

Or did he?

Holding out hope for a miraculous getaway (or at least a painless release from his earthly existence) for poor Tubby, we turn to Flying Dog’s Old Scratch Amber Lager. As a ghostly off-white head melts into rich copper shades, its inviting butterscotch and toffee undertones lure its patrons to the safety of a dry finish. Riding a wave of carbonation, the spiciness of Perle hops and a faint, citric sourness break through Old Scratch’s initial sweetness before fading gently into oblivion. To drink from Old Scratch’s dish is surely better than to bite the hand that would rescue you.

An election day postscript

Here at It’s A Fine Day For A Beer, it is our firmest political conviction that people should think for themselves, make informed decisions, and vote as they see fit. We encourage open minds and respect differences of opinion in politics just as we do with people’s particular tastes and preferences in beer. This is something that we hope has been made abundantly clear in our Election Day missive, our writeup on the final day of the Democratic National Convention, and anyplace else where politics may have intersected with our love of quality beer. 

It is not our place to tell you what to believe or how to vote – and regardless, we would hope that you would take your cues on such fundamental and serious matters from someplace other than a web site devoted to the enjoyment of beer.

That being said, we are not without our own personal biases, opinions, assumptions, and beliefs – some undoubtedly to the left of mainstream, and others as clearly to the right.

As has been noted before, we are also not without advertisements. The minimal support of click-based and commission-based advertising dollars (and it is minimal) is a necessary part of existence. Some of these ads are of our choosing. Others are contextual advertisements largely out of our control.

Yesterday, our own private beliefs collided uncomfortably with some of this contextual advertising, as a handful of “Vote Yes on Proposition 8” ads appeared on the site. For those outside of California or somehow unfamiliar with Prop 8, it was, in a nutshell, a proposed amendment to the California state constitution which would eliminate gay marriage rights. This is, of course, a controversial issue (the ballot measure narrowly passed). It’s one which elicits a visceral response from many on both sides. And it is an issue over which we both expect and can accept some sincere disagreement. 

However, “Yes on Proposition 8” is categorically not a position that was ever endorsed, officially or otherwise, by this web site or any of the countless people on its editorial staff. We want to make that clear to anyone who may have seen the ads.

(Of course, so long as they are intruding upon our state of beery bliss, we don’t necessarily oppose any clicking upon such ads that you may choose to do. We’d be happy to see funds diverted from their cause to ours.)

And the winner is…

It’s a strange thing, democracy. 

When they eagerly accept such notions as “frost brewed” or “beechwood aged” as prime determinants of quality, we mock, scorn, or at least question the judgment of the masses. Their taste in music has made commercial terrestrial radio all but unlistenable. Their prime time viewing habits have enabled the viral spread of reality TV. It is the masses who have allowed Justin Timberlake to feel sexy, Paris Hilton to feel relevant – and perhaps worst of all, Matthew McConaughey to have a successful career. 

These same masses have given birth to a Starbucks on every street corner, an Applebee’s in every strip mall-adjacent location not already occupied by Chili’s or T.G.I. Friday’s, and an office birthday cake for every day of the week. They pluralize words with apostrophes. Obesity is on the rise, consumer debt is on the rise – and math skills, of course, are on the decline.

Yet in the face of all this, we repeat the refrain that everyone who is eligible should get out and vote. Not just we the masses, but we here at It’s A Fine Day For A Beer. It’s a sacred right, a tremendous privilege, and an awesome responsibility. While in this office we’re less enthusiastic about John McCain than we were 8 years ago, less enthusiastic about Barack Obama than we were 8 weeks ago, and altogether less than enthusiastic about the empty promises of far too many local ballot measures, we nonetheless urge those of you who have the opportunity and have not done so already to get out and vote. Make informed choices, make sincere choices, and leave no chad hanging.

Today history is made. Perhaps the United States elects its first female Vice President, and its oldest first-term President. More likely, polls would suggest, the sun will rise tomorrow on the country’s first African-American President-elect. It will, regardless, be history not only for whatever “notable first” may come, but for the circumstances that surround it: a nation at war, an economy in flux, a changing population, a changing place for America in the global community (and, of course, a Planet In Peril).

What that history portends for the future remains to be seen. On this fine Tuesday after the first Monday in November, then, there is little more to do (after voting, that is) but to sit back, let the ballots be counted, and say Ale To The Chief – whoever he may be. On the eve of Avery Brewing’s Czar Russian Imperial Stout release party, grab a few bottles of this more democratic brew – one for today, and one to age until Inauguration Day. 

Bursting with hop aroma, this formidable double IPA has the courage and character to stand up to the special interests and greedy corporations that would have you drink flavorless swill. Avery's Ale To The Chief is the change we need. It has malt sweetness. It has notes of pine and grapefruit in its lingering hop flavors. Flavor first. A time for unity, a time for beer. Hops. Malt. Yeast. Peace.

Vote.

*Barack Obama and John McCain images taken with implied or licensed consent from Wikimedia Commons.

The Po8's last score

I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor, and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tred,
You fine-haired sons of bitches.

These words, scrawled on the back of a Wells Fargo waybill, made a marked man of stagecoach bandit and poet (Po8, to be more precise) Charles E. Boles – aka Charles E. Bolton, but best known as Black Bart. Though the self-described Po8 would leave verse at the site of only one other robbery, he is thought to have robbed more than 25 stagecoaches in an eight year span from 1875 until his eventual capture.

The last of those robberies took place on this day in 1883 – as Black Bart returned, for the first time, to the location of his original crime in California’s Calaveras County. In an embellished if not altogether romanticized account, historian George Hoeper sets the scene for that that fateful day in his book Black Bart: Boulevardier Bandit:

It was barely sunup and a chill breeze was riffling the surface of the Stanislaus River on the on the morning of November 3, 1883 when Reason McConnell halted his stage in front of the Reynolds Ferry Hotel. Inside the hotel, in the glow of kerosene lamps, McConnell could see people moving about. He noted with satisfaction that the ferry was tied up on his side of the river. That would save him several minutes of valuable time.

A door slammed and nineteen-year-old Jimmy Rolleri, whose mother, Olivia Antonini Rolleri, ran the hotel, came dashing down the hotel stairs with several letters in his hand.

“Good morning, Mac,” he called, as he traded the letters for a bundle of mail for the hotel. Then, taking notice that the stage carried no passengers, young Rolleri paused before starting down the hill to operate the ferry.

“Mac, can I catch a ride up to the top of the hill with you? That last storm must have started pushing the deer down from the high country. Jim Baker stopped on his way to Sonora last evening and said he saw two big bucks up there on the flat above Yaqui Gulch. I’d like to get a shot at one of them – we could use the meat.”

Boles (who took his stage-robber name from the 1871 short story The Case of Summerfield by William Henry Rhodes) held up the stagecoach shortly after Rolleri had disembarked. Unaware of the hunter in his midst, Black Bart went casually about the  business of plundering the carriage after sending McConnell away with only his horses. As Hoeper tells it, it was while pausing to catch his breath atop a hill that McConnell spotted Rolleri in the distance and signaled to his former passenger. The pair rendezvoused and returned in pursuit of Black Bart. 

The outlaw spotted his would-be captors (or killers) in time to make a hasty escape, but was grazed by one of Rolleri’s bullets. Dropping some of his loot as he fled, Black Bart left behind the clue that would ultimately lead to his arrest.

“Sheriff Tom Cunningham of San Joaquin County was always at the scene of the robbery as soon as possible in an endeavor to locate evidence,” recalled former Wells Fargo agent James E. Rice some years later.

Cunningham’s staying qualities were finally rewarded after Black Bart’s holdup of the stage from Sonora to Milton on November 3, 1883. Arriving at the point where the stage was robbed, the sheriff examined the ground very closely. Suddenly he reached down and picked up a handkerchief, which incident marked the end of Bart’s career. Cunningham examined the handkerchief very closely and the officers who were with him eagerly waited to see what he would say. “At last we have a clew,” he said and directed his associates’ attention to the laundry mark “FX07.”

The handkerchief was taken to San Francisco and after a long search similar marks were found on other linen in a laundry, by Harry Morse, head of the Morse Patrol and Detective Agency of San Francisco. While Morse was in the office of the laundry investigating the marks on the handkerchief, he was told by the proprietor that the gentleman who owned that particular handkerchief was a respected customer, having mining interests in California, and he occasionally called at the laundry. By a rather remarkable coincidence, the “owner” of the linen walked into the building while Morse was there and the detective immediately engaged him in a conversation by stating he understood he was interested in mines. Incidentally Morse told him he had some property he would like to submit for his consideration and that he would be glad to show him sample of ore as well as give him other details of the mining prospect. Bart apparently “fell” for what his newly made acquaintance had to offer and agreed to accompany him to the latter’s office on Montgomery street. When Bart entered and took in the surroundings, he was satisfied he had been trapped for he threw up his hands and exclaimed, “Gentlemen, I pass.”

This portrayal, too, may stray a bit from absolute fact; BlackBart.com suggests a surrender every bit as civil but far less sudden and willing. What seems not to be in dispute is that Black Bart was a gentleman among thieves. Working alone – though at times cleverly using props to convince his quarry that he had others in his gang – he never fired his gun or harmed anyone while committing his crimes. While there was a coarseness to the pair of poems that made him famous, his reputation was as a remarkably polite highwayman.

A hero he was not, but a character he surely was. To this legend of the Wild West, on the anniversary of his final heist, a beer born not far from the many sites of Black Bart’s exploits: Hop Sauce double IPA from Sacramento’s Rubicon Brewing Company. Both poetry and mystery, Hop Sauce’s array of hop flavors wrap themselves around a rich and sweet malt flavor, while the faint suggestion of a velvety white head recedes into glistening amber. As we drink to the history and folklore of Black Bart, we drink also to the good health of Rubicon itself. The venerable brewpub celebrated its 21st anniversary this past weekend. Cheers, and here’s to many more.

Here I lay me down to sleep
To wait the coming morrow,
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,
And everlasting sorrow.
Let come what will, I'll try it on,
My condition can't be worse;
And if there's money in that box
'Tis munny in my purse.

--Black Bart, the Po8

1878

Of Aliens and Pranqsters

The scenes of panic described in press reports, passed through the ages as part of our American folklore, are accepted as truth. They were probably little more real than those scenes of panic described and portrayed by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre company on the famous and infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, which first aired 70 years ago tonight.

“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own,” began Welles, straying little from the opening line of H.G. Wells’s 1898 classic but to set it in a new century. What followed added a bit of theatrical flourish to the grave ruminations of the novel’s opening missive:

We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

Then, as the story goes, when this opening narration gave way to the dramatic conceit of a breaking news bulletin, mass hysteria ensued. People fled their homes in panic, and doomsday fears gripped radio listeners coast to coast. 

Said the New York Daily News account on Halloween, 1938:

Without waiting for further details, thousands of listeners rushed from their homes in New York and New Jersey, many with towels across their faces to protect themselves from "gas" which the invader was supposed to be spewing forth.

Simultaneously, thousands more in states that stretched west to California and south to the Gulf of Mexico rushed to their telephones to inquire of newspapers, the police, switchboard operators, and electric companies what they should do to protect themselves.

It’s almost comical, the events that were reported to have followed. But while some were no doubt taken in by the convincing performance – just as some today are taken in by conspiracy theories suggesting that the broadcast was an experiment in psychological warfare funded by the Rockefeller Foundation – the news of  widespread pandemonium may have been exaggerated ever so slightly.

That the news media might inflate, embellish, and amplify the magnitude of a situation should shock exactly nobody who has seen a news report in this century. That legend might over time supplant truth – even if the specific instances of panic detailed in that original Daily News piece were all true, for example, the totality of the situation was something less than a national panic – should similarly come as little shock. 

Whether  better proof of the gullibility of the masses can be found in the initial response to the War of the Worlds broadcast, or the subsequent willingness to believe that a nation of rubes fled its homes in terror, that October 30, 1938 broadcast remains a pivotal moment in radio history if only for catapulting the great Orson Welles to notoriety. Needless to say, Welles would go on to a great career which included a brilliantly ironic turn as studio boss Lew Lord in the 1979 masterpiece The Muppet Movie.

(If the irony is not immediately apparent, one need only to look at his extensive post-Citizen Kane history of clashes with studio execs over later films like The Lady from Shanghai and the phenomenal – and highly recommended – Touch Of Evil.)

On this fine day for a beer, we offer you the entire original broadcast of The War of the Worlds – and as a special Halloween bonus, The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s inaugural  July 11, 1938 broadcast of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As you listen, and imagine an era when families gathered around a box full of wires and transistors and stared at the wall for hours on end, toast the illustrious and mercurial Orson Welles with North Coast Brewing’s Pranqster Belgian style golden ale. 

This deceptive brew – North Coast’s own intoxicating version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! – looks light in the glass. It feels light in the mouth. But a whisper of clove spiciness and a robust (yet not overly assertive) alcoholic strength – 7.6% abv – conspire to give it a warmth that will sneak up on you if you let your guard down. Drink willingly but cautiously, and you will remember the wonderful lesson you learn tonight: That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is no inhabitant of the pumpkin patch – it’s Pranqster.

Beer In Marvelous Times

On this fine Sunday for a beer, we have "Life In Marvelous Times," the new single from Mos Def, courtesy of RCRDLBL.com (a highly recommended destination, by the way, for anyone interested in checking out new music). Mos Def's new album The Ecstatic hits stores November 25. "Life In Marvelous Times" lands at the iTunes music store on Election Day.

Meanwhile, as you enjoy the sneak peak at Mos Def's new cut, you'll notice a handful of minor changes around here. Most notably, we've added an email subscription option, and a ShareThis button (by all means, share). Like the email subscriptions, the Fine Day RSS feed is now handled by FeedBurner. Keep an eye out in the coming days for links to the previously dormant It's A Fine Day For A Beer Facebook and MySpace pages, as well as links to a number of beer and non-beer related sites. 

And, yes, you'll notice a few more ads. Be assured that these ads in no way affect our editorial content. And be assured, it's our goal to keep these ads relevant, possibly even useful, but reasonably unobtrusive. Should you find this not to be the case – or should you have any other complaints, comments, or suggestions – the feedback lines are always open at Mike (AT) Finedayforabeer.com.

With that being said, crack open a beer, enjoy what's left of your weekend, and stay tuned as we continue to upgrade the site.

Birds fly away

You know The Basement Tapes and Toys in the Attic. You've heard plenty of garage bands. You might have suffered through more than a few bedroom folk singers in your high school or college days. You probably sing in the shower. But kitchen rock? Maybe not.

One man bands – toothless old men with harmonicas, accordions, and all manner of percussion strapped to their backs and limbs – sure. It's not so uncommon these days to see performers on stage hunched over a laptop with a guitar slung around their shoulders. The frantic calm with which Theresa Andersson attacks the array of effects pedals laid out before her while performing her song "Birds Fly Away" in her kitchen, though – it's pretty good. Fascinating. Mesmerizing. Or at least entertaining.

The New Orleans-based Swedish expat plays tonight in Charlottesville, VA before hitting the road with fellow Swedes Ane Brun and Tobias Froberg on Tuesday. Andersson's new CD, Hummingbird, Go! – recorded in that same kitchen that you just saw – came out last month on NOLA's own Basin Street Records.

It's a fine day for a beer whenever you can "try it before you buy it." We have a pair of tracks from Hummingbird, Go! here for you to listen to and download. Enjoy!

Download "Birds Fly Away"

Download "Na Na Na (Empty Heart)"

Theresa Andersson tour dates

10/21: Washington, DC @ The Swedish Embassy
10/22: New York, NY @ Living Room
10/23: Phildelphia, PA @ Tin Angel
10/24: Arlington, VA @ IOTA Club & Cafe
10/25: Norfolk, VA @ Attucks Theatre
10/28: Nashville, TN @ The Basement*
10/29: Dayton, OH @ Canal Street Tavern*
10/30: Indianapolis, IN @ Rathskeller*
11/01: Chicago, IL @ Schubas
11/06: London, ON @ London Music Club**
11/07: Toronto, ON @ El Mocambo
11/08: Montreal, QUE. @ Les Saints
11/11: Allston, MA @ Great Scott
11/12: Brooklyn, NY @ Union Hall

*solo shows

**with Tobias Froberg only

Liquorpond and a river of porter

We hear of people drowning themselves in drink, and we rightfully expect that it’s a figure of speech, an allusion to tragic immoderation. Never would we expect to find lives swept away in a torrent of beer rushing through the streets.

That’s precisely what happened on this day in 1814, though, when a massive vat of porter burst at Henry Meux & Company’s Horseshoe Brewery at Tottenham Court Road in London. First one 22 foot high brewing tank – which at the time held in excess of 3,500 barrels of beer – burst, then others ruptured from the force of that first explosion. In all, some 8,500 barrels of beer tore through the walls of the brewery and spilled into the streets and surrounding buildings.

The October 19 London Times described the episode as “one of the most melancholy accidents we ever remember.”

The fluid, in its course, swept every thing before it. Two houses in New-street, adjoining the brewhouse, were totally demolished. The inhabitants, who were of the poorer class, were all at home. In the first floor of one of them, a mother and daughter were at tea; the mother was killed on the spot; the daughter was swept away by the current through a partition, and dashed to pieces…

…The bursting of the brew-house walls, and the fall of heavy timber, materially contributed to aggravate the mischief, by forcing the roofs and walls of the adjoining houses. The crowd collected from the time of the accident to a late hour was immense. It presented many distressing scenes of children and others inquiring for and lamenting their parents, relatives, and friends.

A coroner’s inquest (as noted by the Times on October 20, 1814) listed eight deaths from the incident, all women and children. Popular legend suggests that the London Beer Flood claimed a ninth life – by way of alcohol poisoning. Indeed, the BBC’s encyclopedia project h2g2 purports that throngs of people in the tenement neighborhood pounced on this occasion for free refreshment: 

Fearful that all the beer should go to waste though, hundreds of people ran outside carrying pots, pans, and kettles to scoop it up - while some simply stooped low and lapped at the liquid washing through the streets. However, the tide was too strong for many, and as injured people began arriving at the nearby Middlesex Hospital there was almost a riot as other patients demanded to know why they weren't being supplied with beer too - they could smell it on the flood survivors, and were insistent that they were missing out on a party! Calm was quickly restored at the hospital, but out in the streets was a different matter.

Whether this much was true or not, popular misinformation about the disaster abounds. There are frequent references in London Beer Flood lore to a 1785 Times mention of construction of a large cask being built by Meux (“the size of which exceeds all credibility, being designed to hold 20,000 barrels of porter”), as well as a dinner for 200 held in the enormous vat before its inauguration as a brewing vessel.

Interesting nuggets of trivia, for sure, but ones which have little relevance to the brewery at Tottenham Court Road. Rather, they refer to Meux, Reid and Company’s Griffin Brewery (not to be confused with Fuller’s better-known Griffin Brewery), located at a site that would have been far more fitting for a flood of beer: Liquorpond Street. 

Volume 2 of the 1911 A History of the County of Middlesex – in turn, citing 18th Century  British historian and naturalist Thomas Pennant – sheds considerable light on the matter:

The locality is one of much interest; close by are Gray's Inn Road and Hatton Garden, and in Brooke Street, near the brewery, the poet Chatterton brought his life to its sad end. The buildings, which covered upwards of 4 acres, extended from the north end of Gray's Inn Lane, across Leather Lane, to Hatton Garden. The business was established some time in the 17th century, and was always noted for its black beer or porter. In 1809 the firm dissolved partnership, Mr. Meux acquiring a business for himself in Tottenham Court Road, and Mr. A. Reid retaining possession of the old brewhouse in Liquorpond Street. Various distinguished persons from time to time visited the brewery, among them the Emperor Napoleon III, who showed his appreciation of the firm's famous stout by emptying a tankard.

Pennant gives statistics of the barrels of strong beer brewed by the chief porter brewers of London in 1786-7, in which Richard Meux, who then owned the Griffin Brewery, figures ninth on the list with an output of 49,651 barrels. The same writer, speaking of this brewhouse as it existed in his day, says:

The sight of a great London brewhouse exhibits a magnificence unspeakable. The vessels evince the extent of the trade. Mr. Meux of Liquorpond Street, Gray's Inn Lane, can show twenty-four tuns, containing in all 35,000 barrels. In the present year he has built a vessel 60 feet in diameter, 176 feet in circumference, and 23 feet in height. It cost £5,000 in building, and contains from ten to twelve thousand barrels of beer, valued at about £20,000. A dinner was given to 200 people at the bottom, and 200 more joined the company to drink success to the vat.

Another vat of even greater dimensions was, about the time that Pennant wrote, constructed by this firm in their no. 3 store. This was called the 'X.Y.Z.,' and exceeded in size all similar vessels constructed before or since; its capacity was for 20,000 barrels of porter, and it cost £10,000. At that time the London porter brewers strove in rivalry for the possession of the largest vat. 

Different company, different location (albeit one with a quite suggestive name), and two different vats, all frequently included in tales of the London Beer Flood. Don’t believe the lies – but do believe, as we recall this terrible waste of beer and far more terrible waste of innocent lives, that it is a fine day to enjoy the relative safety of a mere pint.

The original Horseshoe Brewery is no longer with us, torn down in 1922 and replaced in 1928 by the Dominion Theatre. Meux & Co. survived the flood, thanks in part to their success in convincing Parliament to return the already-paid excise duties on the lost porter. They did not, however, survive the ongoing trend towards ever more mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation. According to the British National Archives, after obtaining Thorne Bros. in 1914, Meux & Co. relocated in 1921 to the Nine Elms Brewery – renaming it the Horseshoe Brewery. As the result of a long series of subsequent moves, the closest thing we have today – on the business family tree, that is – to Meux’s once renowned porters is Tetley’s English Ale. This sleek flaxen brew is a far cry from the porters of any generation, though. 

Instead on this fine day for a beer, seek out Meantime’s London Porter and sip it to these words of Peter Pindar (aka John Wolcot) from “The lamentations of the porter-vat, which exploded of the drug-gripes, October 17, 1814”:

Here—as ’tis said—in days of yore,
(Such days, alas! will come no more),
Resided Sir John Barleycorn,
An ancient Briton, nobly born,
With Mrs. Hop—a well-met pair,
For he was rich, and she was fair. 

Yet they—like other married Folke,
When their past vows they can’t revoke—
Were opposite in disposition,
And quarrell’d without intermission;
For He alone produc’d the Sweets,
Which She, with Bitters only, meets!

Howe’er by dint of perseverance,
By gentle conjugal endearance,
The Sweets predominating most,
In strength excelling, rul’d the roast;
Whilst she, obedient, did her duty—
That greatest ornament of beauty. 

Her Bitters, thus by him controll’d,
Their wholesome properties unfold,
And give to him superior pow’rs—
Superior charms for social hours;
As Beauty, with persuasive tongue,
Tempers the mind, by passion wrung. 

At length, from this domestic Pair,
Was born a well-known Son and Heir;
Whose deeds o’er half the world are fam’d,
By Britons, Master Porter, nam’d.