There is an old folk poem that we Brits chant as we stand around a burning effigy, set atop a roaring bonfire, every year on November 5th just as the season’s chill really starts to take hold.
I will not be fully quoting it here, that is why we have Google these days, but it starts as follows:
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
While November 5th was Election Day this year in the United States, it is celebrated as Guy Fawkes Night every year back in the old country, and has been celebrated as such since the 1600s.
But why do we celebrate on November 5th?
What’s with the fire and the effigy?
And who the hell is Guy Fawkes?
We shall start with Guy, or Guido as his friends enemies called him.
He was a dissident Catholic in the rule of James I of England (and VI of Scotland), a time when the English Protestant Church was cementing its authority, after a bloody back-and-forth for seventy years under four previous monarchs.
On the night of November 4th/5th he was unfortunately (for him, not for us) discovered hanging out in the undercroft of the House of Lords (think, Congress), with a bunch of firewood and 36 barrels of gunpowder, part of a plot to bring the whole pile down and disrupt (really disrupt) the State Opening of Parliament due to be held on November 5th, all in the hope that it would help trigger a “popular” uprising by the folks in the Midlands and give power back to the Catholics.
With his capture, the whole plot fell apart and the plotters, there were many of them, were rounded up and strung up, and bits of them moved around town.
The country breathed a big sigh of relief, and resolved to celebrate the failure of this insurrection by setting fire to piles of household and garden trash on the anniversary each year.
The kids were to be entertained by a firework show, and by being allowed to construct a Guy, an effigy, made up of old clothes stuffed with more old clothes, which they were then allowed to parade around town and solicit donations (Penny for the Guy).
Once the individual or communal bonfires were lit and blazing, the Guy was unceremoniously ceremonially tossed on top, the poem was read aloud, and much hilarity ensued, or at least that was the way it was celebrated in the poorer streets of Strood.
Wikipedia mentions that this tradition was exported to all lands colonized by the British, including right here, where it eventually run out of steam and was killed off after the American Revolution; there are those that believe that it should have been kept around as an annual warning to would be traitors.
Having lived on the “wrong” side of the pond for the last 45 years, it has been a long while since I got to participate in a Guy Fawkes celebration; no back garden here in NYC and besides, the local authorities frown on that sort of thing, although the Penny for the Guy concept could maybe make a comeback?
Not so in the hamlet of Rock Stream on the western shore of Seneca Lake, where Seneca Lake Brewing Company has been holding its annual bonfire night celebration for several years now.
This year, it was time for me to see what all the fuss was about, so I dragged persuaded my long-suffering wife to tag along for a long-weekend jaunt to the NY Finger Lakes, to watch some old clothes being torched and to explore some of the region’s fine cideries.
We drove up the day of the event, Saturday November 9th, as we had been dog-watching again last week and had to complete the handover before setting off.
To make up for the limited time to explore before the fiery extravaganza, we had booked into the local motel (right across the road from the brewery) for a couple of nights, intending to spend the Sunday just enjoying the break from the big city.
We had no actual firm plans for the Sunday, but I had scoped out a couple of interesting cideries in Trumansburg, one lake over to the east; more on that later.
As is becoming our tradition, we stopped off at Livingston Manor on the way up to visit with our good friend and NYC neighbor at her mountaintop “farm”, and to socialize, feed and pet her ever-growing menagerie; four goats, four pigs, two sheep and a cow at last count, with numerous cats hiding away in the house and barns.
We were hoping to visit the critters at Lively Run Dairy in the Finger Lakes as well, but they were closed for the season, and the local u-pick apple-picking locations were all u-picked out.
Never mind, we had effigies to burn.
We arrived at the Golden Knight about an hour before the event was due to start, and spent the time finishing off our car munchies, which consisted primarily of cheese and crackers; yes, we took cheese (coals) to the Finger Lakes (Newcastle).
With our stomachs lined, we dressed appropriately (first sweater day of the season) and wandered over the street to the brewery, and down the drive to the snug to check in.
First order of the day was to check out the local provisions on the patio; breweries, wineries and distilleries, nothing shabby there.
A quick taster of the applejack from Finger Lakes Distilling, a quick hello to the good folks from Big Alice Brewing, we miss you in the city, and a wander down to the bonfire site, before heading back up to the Beerocracy bar to check out the handpumps; they had seven engines operational with a new beer, a sour ale, on one of them.
I had a half of the sour at the bar, and we stayed to chat with the crew for a while before I grabbed a to-go pint of the SLB52 golden ale to keep me busy while watching the festivities.
It wasn’t long before the sound of the pipes was heard throughout the glen, and a torchlight procession made its way through the parking lot, past the snug, and on to the boundary of the bonfire.
Bradley gave a speech explaining the history and custom of the event, and then the Guy was placed onto his “throne” on top of the fire, the torches were thrown under and around him, and slowly the flames began to take hold.
It was a good bonfire.
There was no wind, so the flames climbed straight up into the sky, creating a vortex that stayed perfectly well within the safety ropes.
Unlike many of the bonfires of my youth, which usually resulted in a call to the Fire Brigade; it may have had something with the car tires that we used to supplement the wood …
But like those earlier bonfires, I stood mesmerized by the wisps of smoke and flame, beer in hand (Lucky Hare bottle-aged sour this time, instead of a pipkin can), staying and staring until the fire had burned itself down to a fiery lava pit of smoldering charcoal.
As the event came to an end, we walked back up through the bar to say our goodbyes, before crossing over the street to our motel room and the shower; we both smelled like bacon, as did our clothes.
Mmmm bacon … thoughts turned to breakfast.
Those thoughts were still there on Sunday morning, so we decided to spend a leisurely morning exploring the village of Watkins Glen; breakfast in Tobey’s Donut Shop, followed by a long walk around the entire village to check out the wildlife.
We found a very friendly cat down a back street, and an equally friendly but skittish whippet while navigating our way over the boulders to the end of the harbor breakwater.
We scoped out the State Park to see if the Gorge Trail was still open, but just like the area farms, it was out of season; we are also in the middle of a drought right now, so the water flow coming through the lowest, and only visible, waterfall was not as impressive as usual.
We considered hiking one of the rim trails, but fortunately it was approaching midday, when the cideries over by Cayuga Lake would be opening for business, so we returned to the car and headed east to Trumansburg.
Twenty five minutes later, we pulled into the parking area at Bellwether Hard Cider, and entered the tasting room where we were immediately rushed by a large barking muscular pittie, who wanted nothing more than to slobber all over us. We accommodated her. Her name was Hope.
The place was quite busy considering that they had just opened on an off-season afternoon; there was a couple already there when we arrived, and another group of eight or nine folks arrived shortly after us.
I got a tasting flight of five ciders, which included an intriguing pétillant naturel (aka pét nat), a sparkling cider which gets its soft carbonation by being bottled before primary fermentation has completed, the end result being a dry fruity gentle cider with characteristics and mouthfeel not unlike a cask ale; I may be hooked. I was certainly hooked enough to purchase a bottle for home consumption.
I got talking cask cider with Ben the owner, who had mentioned that he had previously provided ciders in firkins to events in Ithaca, so I got his card with the intention of hooking him up with Bradley at Seneca Lake Brewing; hoping for a cask cider at the next NYS British Real Ale Fest.
All five ciders were wonderfully dry with tastes covering the full range of English, French and North American styles; as much as I like a nice blueberry or blackcurrant cider, I like the more traditional less approachable stuff even more.
I even got a complementary tasting of a pét nat Riesling that they also make.
We stayed about an hour.
It was a nice visit.
Our second and final stop for the day was pretty much just around the corner; Black Diamond Farm was barely five minutes’ drive away, closer to the town of Trumansburg itself and closer to our way home.
We had to go a couple of hundred yards off road on the farm lane before rolling up to the Cider Shack (as cute as it sounds) which was closed.
Following the instructions posted on the door, I phoned the farm and within a couple of minutes we were joined by the farmer Ian and his wife, his brother-in-law and his wife, and family dog Rosie an affectionate doodle, who spent much of the hour that we were there with her head on my lap, before getting tired and curling up on the floor to nap.
It was a delightful hour of wide-ranging conversation for all present, and of cider sampling for me.
I went for the four-taster varietal flight, three of which were bottle-conditioned (on lees) and poured from the bottle, and the other was served on draught; I picked up a bottle-conditioned version to take home as it was the most interesting of the four.
As with the Bellwether samples, all of the ciders used a combination of English, French and North American apples, but only one of the ciders was a blend, the others all being single varietals.
All were delightfully dry and very complex, with the 2019 Shin Hollow having a wonderful wildness about it.
The taster pours were very generous, and I had a silly grin on my face by the time we left to go back to Seneca Lake; make sure you bring a designated driver folks!
We finished off the day with cheese and crackers again in the hotel room, before wandering back over to the Beerocracy to hang out with Bradley for an hour or so before he closed down for the evening.
We left for home bright and early on Veteran’s Day morning, grabbed breakfast in Curly’s Family Restaurant in Watkins Glen, and had an uneventful trip; uneventful if you do not count the major traffic accident on I-80 in the Poconos, and the hassle of navigating into and out of the Costco mall in Wayne NJ.
But the GW Bridge Gods were with us this time and we crossed the Hudson in one smooth motion; yeah, that never happens.
And for those folks who couldn’t bother to google the Guy Fawkes Night Poem, it finishes with the following stanza:
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Thankfully for the most part, the Catholics and Protestants have sorted themselves out, and come to a sensible détente based around their common ancestry and shared humanity, may it remain so.
But there is always somebody looking to divide us; for their own advantage, or to satisfy the extremes of their beliefs, or just plain ignorance or bigotry.
Maybe there should be other celebrations around the world to mark the days when we came closest to destroying ourselves; I can think of a few candidates.
But it won’t be because of something that the Pope did.
So we didn’t get to hang the Pope, probably just as well, but we did get our cheese, and I did get my beer …
… and we both got to enjoy a jolly good fire.
Scorecard w/e 11/12/24
In the past week the Cask Whisperer has enjoyed the following casks:
- Fifth Hammer Finer Bines Wet Hop Pale Ale @ Jones Wood Foundry
- Old Glenham Weavers Pale Ale @ Jones Wood Foundry
- Seneca Lake Brewing Sour Ale @ The Beerocracy, Rock Stream NY
- Seneca Lake Brewing SLB52 Golden Ale @ The Beerocracy, Rock Stream NY
- Seneca Lake Brewing Berties Brown Ale @ The Beerocracy, Rock Stream NY
- Seneca Lake Brewing Steamship Foreign Export Stout @ The Beerocracy, Rock Stream NY
In the past week the Cask Whisperer has also enjoyed the following bottled ales and ciders:
- Lucky Hare Wild Hare Syrah Sour @ The Beerocracy, Rock Stream NY
- Bellwether Pet Nat Original @ Bellwether Hard Cider & Wine Cellars, Trumansburg NY
- Black Diamond 2021 Geneva Tremlett’s @ Black Diamond Farm & Cider, Trumansburg NY
- Black Diamond 2021 Ashmead’s Kernel/Reinette Musqee @ Black Diamond Farm & Cider, Trumansburg NY
- Black Diamond 2019 Shin Hollow @ Black Diamond Farm & Cider, Trumansburg NY
- Black Diamond 2021 Kingston Black @ Black Diamond Farm & Cider, Trumansburg NY
Upcoming Cask Events (Festivals and Otherwise)
12/7/24: 6th Annual Indie Cask Fest @ TBC Beer Co. Bay Shore NY
4/2/25 – 4/5/25: 26th Annual NERAX will be held in Boston MA. Save the dates!
Upcoming Random NYC Casks
- On this Thursday, November 14th City Swiggers will be celebrating their 13th anniversary with a cask of Sierra Nevada Celebration and a cask of Forest & Main British Porter.
- Wild East Brewing are celebrating their Grandiversary (4th Anniversary) this Friday and Saturday, November 15th-16th; there are rumors of casks.
- On Friday, November 22nd the NYC chapter of the Pink Boots Society will be tapping a cask of their collaboration with Strong Rope, a Baltic Porter at Strong Rope Gowanus at 7pm.
NYC Cask Venues
Known Operational/Active Beer Engines
- Jones Wood Foundry (x2)
- Fifth Hammer
- Wild East
- The Shakespeare (x3)
- Cask Bar & Kitchen
- Drop-off Service
Occasional Pins (worth a follow on Instagram)
- Strong Rope
- KCBC
- Tørst
- Blind Tiger Ale House
- Threes Brewing
- Brouwerij Lane (First Friday Firkins)
