On This Day (22 July 1938): Make mine a Double!

Vaux on one side of the Wear and the colliery on the other - today the area is spearheading the city’s regeneration and is home to SAFC...

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Still popular across Wearside and beyond, Double Maxim brown ale has been a Sunderland institution for generations, with many sources recognising this date as an important marker in its story.

Maxim Ale was first produced in 1901 to celebrate the return from the Boer War of the Maxim Gun detachment, whose commander Ernest Vaux was a member of the brewing family.

However, landlords soon started complaining that it was so strong, customers were falling asleep in their pubs, leading to a reduction in its

strength. Yet on 22 July 1938, this was reversed and the drink renamed Double Maxim, with this iteration quickly becoming a staple.

Vaux had been advertising their beers on the front cover of Sunderland’s match day programme, the News and Record and subsequently News And Official Programme for several years at this point and sure enough, Double Maxim quickly took pride of place in the slot.

Marketed as an energy drink at first, it retained a presence around the club thereafter, being served in the hospitality areas at the Stadium of Light in recent years, even though it never made it onto the strip during Vaux’s long-term kit sponsorship deal that lasted from 1985 through until the brewery’s closure in 1999.

Celebrating an earlier milestone

Bottles — the contents of which have been poured into half-pint glasses, of course — have been sank countless times to toast a victory for those in red and white.

The tradition was able to be kept alive when a group of former employees bought the brand and recipe and created the Double Maxim Beer Company (now Maxim Brewery), whilst the name ‘Vaux’ has also made a welcome return in recent years.

Fittingly, given the original firm was one of the biggest supporters of the club, the new company produces an exclusive lager that is available on the matchday concourses.

Supporters may recall that in the 1980s and 1990s, The Double Maxim public house would show away games on VHS and hosted several talk-in events with various club representatives.

The site on the Durham Road/North Moor Lane roundabout now houses a McDonald’s restaurant and is currently being developed further, nearly one hundred years since the original North Moor Inn was constructed there.

The pub might be long gone, but the name endures, and after eight seven years of history, Double Maxim will surely continue to be quaffed by connoisseurs and fans alike.

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Vaux in the matchday programme — a trip back in time...

1928-29

1936-37

1938-39

1978-79 Double Maxim was a huge part of the line up

1983-84

1987-88

1987-88 This advertising character was referred to as ‘Wor Eddie’

1991-92

1993-94

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