Days of the Beer, August 14

The beer for today is Great Lakes Blackout Stout.

On August 14, 2003, at 4:10:48 p.m. Eastern time, 265 power plants that serve most of the Northeast U.S. started to shut down. This event became known as the Northeast Blackout of 2003.
It affected people in Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, New York City, Baltimore, Buffalo, Albany, Detroit and parts of New Jersey. The blackout covered about 9,300 square miles, and affected nearly 50 million people.

The day was rather warm, around 88 degrees in the affected area, which may have had something to do with the blackout as lots of people had their air conditioning on.

When power lines carry more electricity, they get hotter and sag. Trees under the power lines are pruned to prevent them from coming in contact with the sagging lines. If a power line touches a tree, it creates a short circuit and that power line is taken off the grid. When that happens, power is re-routed to a different line, and it carries more of a load. When lines are cut off, that causes power plants in different areas to attempt to provide more energy to the grid. Then, those lines overheat, stretch and fail, so the plants go off-line. The first power line failed at 2:02. By 4:13, 256 plants were off line, 85% because of failed lines.

Power was restored to most areas later that evening. New York's power was restored in the early morning the next day. By August 16, power was fully restored in New York and Toronto. Pretty much everywhere had power by August 18.

As a result, for the next week, most people were very conscious of their energy use and people who didn't conserve, were derided. This apparently didn't last. There were 11 fatalaties blamed on the outage. There were 3,000 fires reported, most were from people using candles.

On the night of the event, people in New York City could actually see the Milky Way and satellites, because their view wasn't obscured by city lights. (I wonder if the Perseids were visible?)

Gogol Bordello's song "Oh No" is about the event. In honor of the event, Great Lakes named their Russian Imperial Stout Blackout Stout.

The beer clocks in at 9%.

A Russian Imperial Stout with a hearty malt body and bold hop flavor. Named after the infamous "Blackout of 2003" that left the northeastern United States in complete darkness, but resulted in old-fashioned neighborhood porch parties and fun.
Available in February & March.

This beer gets 98% on Ratebeer, and an A on BeerAdvocate. It's one of my favorite beers, whenever I see it, I grab a bottle or two. It doesn't make it down here often, but is available in Chicago and is seemingly always in Columbus. I've got several bottles in my basement gathering dust.