BEER AND MILK

By "Think-a-Drink" Hoffman


Pouring several different drinks from one container is a feat of magic known to be several hundred years old. The first description of the effect tells about using a beer keg having several compartments each connected with the one spigot so that, in turn, one after another of the drinks could be drawn by the magician. Later a bottle was used instead of a beer keg and the mechanism was made much more simple to operate. There were several air vents which could be covered or opened by the fingers of the hand in which the magician held the bottle, very much in the way a musician plays a flute. This bottle trick was a feature in the programs of John Henry Anderson and Signor Blitz, as well as Alexander Herrmann and Harry Kellar. In fact most of the leading magicians of the past century and the early part of this one had the trick in their shows. I had always liked the idea of the trick and therefore based my entire act upon the idea, but with an entirely different set of principles and actually giving the audience a genuine choice of any drink they wished. In the time of Anderson, he seemed to give the same choice but a hundred years ago there were few mixed drinks and there were but a limited number of any kind for which a gentleman would ask.
Another change I made in the act was to announce that I would produce the chosen beverages if the various spectators each would "Think-a-Drink." In line with this think a drink idea, I modernized and perfected another old effect which I used in my act during a time when I wanted to make the act longer. The effect is that of drawing a picture on a paper and then producing the actual article from the drawing. Pictures of rabbits and girls have been drawn on sheets of paper and the live rabbit or the living girl produced from the drawing. There was even an old effect of drawing a beer keg upon a piece of paper and drawing beer from the keg. This is the basis as far as idea goes of the effect I am about to describe. It has been modernized and elaborated as with the rest of my act. I know the effect upon the audience and the practicability of the apparatus.
Naturally I presented it in line with the "Think-a-Drink" patter but other magicians will find it just as effective using patter fitting in with their own shows. I suggested that some people had difficulty thinking of something unless they visualized it. I saw there was such a person in my audience and asked for paper and crayon. My assistant immediately brought forward a drawing board upon which there was a piece of drawing paper thumb tacked to the board at the four corners. I took the board and spun it around to show both back and front and handed it back to the assistant. She held it up against her chest and I took the crayon and started in to draw a picture. It was soon apparent that the picture was that of a beer keg. I then took an ordinary beer spigot and pushed it into the head of the picture of the keg. Then one after another I filled four beer glasses by turning on the spigot. When the fourth glass was about half full, I pretended to hear the question, "What about milk?"
"It is just as easy to visualize milk as beer," So saying I jerked the spigot from the picture and took the board from the girl and gave it a quarter turn. With a few strokes of the crayon the beer keg was transformed into a cow--a cartoonist's idea of a cow--but a cow. I immediately started in to milk that cow and the milk went into the glass with the same strong, but intermittent, streams that it comes from the more genuine variety.

The secret of the trick is the construction of the board. It looks like an ordinary drawing board of medium size. Actually the board is only a shell of very thin veneer. Inside this hollow board is a tank made of copper which has been chromium plated to make it easier to clean. The tank is approximately ten by sixteen inches by one inch in thickness. Such a size tank will have the capacity to fill four beer glasses. At the top of the drawing board is a small thumb screw which will open the air vent in the tank, and which can be opened by the girl who holds the board during the trick. At the bottom of the tank is a valve held shut normally by a spring. When the spigot is pressed against that valve, it is opened. The valve diameter is exactly the same as that of the end of the spigot. It will be seen essential that there be no fumbling when the magician pushes the spigot into the "beer keg" and into the valve hole. In order to find this hole immediately, the spot previously has been marked on the paper. As a matter of fact the entire picture of the barrel and the additional lines turning the barrel into a cow have been drawn on the paper with a fine pencil. The only other point to know about the beer compartment is that it is filled through the air vent by using a funnel.

The milk is held in a rubber tube with a bulbous end, which is put out by medical supply houses. It is made of quite light rubber. This rubber tube is fastened to one side of the beer tank, and in just the position that the bulb end will come at that spot in the cartoon of the cow where the udder has been drawn. There is a vent at the top of this tube such as for the beer tank and the milk is poured into the tube in that way. The tip of the bulb has a small hole cut in it--large enough to permit the milk to be forced out but too small for the milk to run out. When the tube is being filled the bulb is squeezed shut and as the milk runs into the tube, the pressure on the bulb is released. This fills the bulb with milk. When the magician comes to the milking effect, he takes hold of this bulb and by squeezing it, he will squirt the milk out in a stream. Repeating this several times will give an exact copy of milking a real cow.

It should be pointed out that both at the hole for the spigot and at the udder of the cow, the paper has been cut with a razor blade before the performance. At the spigot hole, a cross is cut and the udder is outlined by the razor just inside the pencil line which is to be traced with the crayon. The first cut permits the spigot to go in easily without having to put on enough pressure to burst the paper. The second cut permits the bulbous end of the rubber to be taken in the hand as if it were the teat of the cow.

The trick is a comedy item and as such will be found very amusing; however it is also a good trick because it does not seem possible to have so much liquid hidden anywhere. The drawing board looks so fair and the five glasses of liquid look so much bigger than they are actually. It also adds immensely to the trick having the change in liquid not only because of the tricky change in the drawing in making a cow out of a barrel, but because beer is so entirely different from milk.

I sincerely hope that you will like the trick as it is, but even if it will not fit in your show, I hope that it will lead you to think of ways to modernize and elaborate some tricks which you have always wanted to do but felt were pretty dated. Old ideas and modern methods make a wonderful combination.