Dark Lord Day, 2009by Bob Ostrander It all started back in the years when Three Floyds had a tasting room instead of a pub. It was open Thursday and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. When Dark Lord was available there would be 50 to 100 people there. The only thing to do was make it an official party day. Now 3,000 come to let FFF entertain loyal customera and sell a lot of beer. Flatly said, it's one of the very best venues anywhere to try rare beers, share your finds, and generally have a beer day without hassles. The organization in Dyer is about as close to anarchy as you can get. Not chaos though; they've hidden the organization behind the doors to the brewery. No signs, no program, no announcements, more etiquette than rules. The half-dozen friendly but fierce-looking police are only interested in stopping or preventing problems. Etiquette is important. A few niceties, like not starting fights, are apparent but there's also a certain way to ask for a sample of someone's beer - say "please". The other mandate is "if you see someone with an empty glass, offer to fill it".
The line to redeem Golden Tickets for Dark Lord started officially about 8am when someone told the 30 or so people who had been milling around since 6am which door would be the entrance. Some North Carolinians and Georgians got the honor of being at the front of the line. About 10am the line reached the entrance of the parking lot after snaking past the adequate number of portapotties. By this time folks were ready with chairs, coolers, and even corny kegs (below).
By 10:30 the line was over a block long. More people, more coolers, more chairs, some costumes, and the first sprinkles of (shudder) rain and lightning. In the 70°s already and heading for 80° so the sprinkles didn't dampen the mood.
The doors opened around 11am. By now the line was much longer than last year; going to the end of the street and circling a parking lot 1½ times, about 3 hours. Rodney and Jess have a good aerial map of the line at Hoosier Beer Geek.
The Brewpub opened at noon and served plenty of special beers during the day including the unofficial by-acclamation festival best - Vanilla Bean Dark Lord. Also on tap were Omeganaught Small beer, Hyena Belgian Pale, Black Sun, Banana Split Seven-Inch, Devil's Handshake, Slave Princess, and a bunch more. The hour-long line to get into the bar was the second of four to form during the day (not counting the automobile jam-ups when a semi truck and a limo decided to monkey up the access roads. A table with samples of Dark Lord for Golden Ticket holders had a 20-minute wait and the sole food vendor had a line of over half an hour. But it was inside the brewery where the serious action took place. First, visit a minion who will trade your ticket for 4 bottles of Dark Lord and $60.
Then to another room where you can buy other FFF products including Popskull ($12), Dreadnaught, and the other usual suspects. Other booths inside had a large variety of FFF apparel and "Fancy Beers" by the taste (see HBG for a complete list). Tastes were $5 and varied in size. Highlights: FFF Oak-aged Dark Lord, Alpha Klaus, and Behemoth, with and without cherries; Struise Black Albert; Pizza Port San Clemente Infamous Chocolate; Founders CBS; Surly Teabagged Furious; Stone Vertical Epic, Red wine barrel-aged Old Guardian, 10th Anniversary. All in all, about 40 varieties.
Structure: Nick Floyd and Lincoln Anderson seem to be in charge. Then a trio (?) of Nick look-alike Seraphim (as below left). Finally, tons of minions (below right) who actually go a fair day's pay for their work. Good on FFF.
By 3:30 the line is gone. Everyone with a Golden Ticket has been served. That's when the weather turned. First a breeze from the north. Then a stronger, colder breeze. When the seagulls started circling from Lake Michigan, 13 miles away, we knew it was permanent. Then it got colder. And wetter. Half of the parking lot crowd swapping beers under the tents left before 5pm but plenty of hardy souls just kept on after whipping out umbrella's secreted on their person who knows where. Instead of the big mass in the parking lot groups congealed into lawn parties at neighboring businesses.
True to the info on the web, standing in the big line wasn't really necessary. They promised Dark Lord to everyone with a Golden Ticket who claimed it before 6pm. After 6pm you could just walk in and buy as much as you wanted. About 3 pallets were left and anyone with enough cash could have filled their walk-in. Of course, by then it was down to 48° and practically everyone was gone. Bands. What festival would be complete without bands. Metal bands. Heavy Metal bands. Death Metal bands. Pelican, Sybris, Waco Brothers, Bible of the Devil, Big Science, Imperial Battle Snake. This went on inside from opening until 10:30pm. Yes, that's a happy couple drinking DL from bottles.
10:30pm: Nick has left the building. The parking lot has been cleaned up by multiple minions. The last band is shutting down. There's still a 20-person line waiting to get into the bar. It's 42°. And it's raining again.
Some other pictures:
Other web reports:
Summary: The Golden Ticket thing worked well for those who had one. They could have made many more people happy and sold the other 3 pallets if they had posted a notice about open sales after 6pm (it was on the web site). Oh, and it's available in Denmark. (at least 2007 and 2008). This is badly translated from beerticker.dk:
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