Dark Lord Day (DLD) 2015

I can confirm that is Mick, i was there with him. I love his fluffy beard.

 

I was pouring beer at the main Three Floyd's tent. We had just the
Chevalier Bertrand.

 

Awesome, thanks guys! It's great to add another layer to the day!

 

My son was Group B and he got one.

 

My first DLD! Had a solid time.. But lost my 2yr Portuguese rum Variant right outside the exit of the allotment sale. Bad part was, i gave someone a 100 dollar bill for his YES card. So we kind of grouped up off to the right at the exit after sales and popped some bottles. I go to the bathroom and come back and we just loaded up and left the area. And i think i just left it behind or it was stolen while i was gone. I know its long gone, but would be cool if the person that found it saw this and was cool about it? Asking too much? Even if they said finders keepers at least i know it was someone here and it didn't get stolen. lol

Will go back again with a sober baby sitter. We definitely drank too much in the allotment line with everyone just kind of passing by opening good beer. Had some good pours and offered mine up as well. That was my favorite part. Some guy popped a pirate bomb and i had the balls to hold my cup up before he even got a pour. I normally wouldnt be so bold, but its pirate bomb! haha... He poured like 3 pours before he even took some. I thanked him every time we passed him.

 

Outstanding. I'm a huge fan of regular PS so I may be slightly biased. It had a thick, full mouthfeel and it was very smooth.

 

Did they have anybody at the entrance gates checking for weapons? I mean pat-downs are common at concerts (at least the concerts I've gone to, LOL). If not they should. Otherwise some day, there's gonna be a real fucking tragedy at one of these sort of events, and everybody's gonna ask "how come they weren't searching for weapons"? And isn't Indiana an open-carry state? I know it's conceal carry like everywhere else now. Maybe because of that, they can't check for guns and knives.

 

Yeah, I don't want to be preachy about it, but I find the immediate resale of this stuff to be really distasteful. I get the temptation, but I wish people were buying the beer to drink it rather than profit on it. It's also illegal to resell it, for whatever that's worth. That's not really what bothers me, it's just the increasing trophy-ification of the stuff and it getting further and further out of a lot of folks' reach. Anyway, it's just a bit sad.

 

I'm inclined to agree, although I don't really have that much of an issue with people doing the selling, if that makes any sense. As someone who has (still) never had a drop of any of the BA Dark Lords, it's a shame to watch them get sold away, but once someone has won a variant, I don't really begrudge them the right to make some cash out of it.

 

I like to believe that they bought it with the intention of drinking it but once offered $200+ for their $50 bottle that they changed their minds. The couple that we hung out with most of the day said that they won a BAVDL a year or 2 ago & someone offered them $350 in the parking lot so they took it but to this day they haven't tried Vanilla. They sort of regret it but that $350 paid their bills for the month minus their new mortgage (young couple & they had just gotten married).

 

Well the people that keep going through the line till they win suck too

 

I've been fortunate enough to win a variant at every DLD since they were first available; sometimes two of them, and I have never sold them.

This year when my wife and I walked out during A group with two VBDL's and people were already asking for a price, I said, "$400." Really, if someone offered me $250-$300, I would've handed it right over. The beer is good, in fact, it's great. But for people here to say it's "distasteful" to resell, I couldn't disagree more. The fact that FFF's is selling it for $50 is already outrageous, and would fall in the distasteful category if you want to call it that, in my mind. How is FFF's ripping me off by selling me a beer for an absurd price any different than me ripping the next guy off by selling him a beer for a ridiculous price. They are the same, it's supply and demand.

Besides BC Rare, it's the only beer I've ever paid that much for, and believe you me, I feel like a fool when I pay that. But being swept up in DLD, etc., I always hand over the cash with a smile on my face.

It is the noobs that perpetuate these issues. I can't believe it but reading a lot of posts on here, and meeting a lot of people at DLD each year, but getting in to craft in the mid-2000s somehow means I was early to the party. You get over hurt feelings of not winning a special DL and the whale chase. In the end, you get stuck with a cellar filled with a few hundred great beers and you have to race to start putting them away. No beer is worth $50, let alone hundreds of $'s. If someone offered me a few hundred for a BA DL, I'd take their money, and do my best not to call them a fool after the exchange.

A person (Z) not winning the BA DL means they don't get one. Whether X wins and resells to Y at a huge profit has no impact on Z. Whether X doesn't win one, wins and consumes, or wins and sells has no bearing on Z not winning or getting to have it.

 

I thought the tabs on the badge were supposed to prevent this, but the people handing out scratch offs weren't taking them diligently.

 

They didn't take our tabs until we were purchased bottles. The guys handing out scratch offs were just putting stacks out on the table and watching the crowds. I saw one woman with a whole handful of them standing to the side scratching away so I'm sure many were doing that.

 

People were getting a scratch off seeing NO not buying their beer and getting in line again. They "broke" your ticket when you bought your beers.

 

That's what i thought.

Also, yes the peeps handing out the tickets weren't very efficient.. I got one in a scrum of people at the table and all I'd have to do is simply take a step back and reach in again for another. I DIDN'T.. but I felt could have.

 

Blame the people that are willing to spend over $200 on a bottle of beer.

 

7th DLD and my fiance and I both won our golden tickets this year after getting skunked last year. Got Vanilla and Coffee (Coffee being the variant I've been waiting years for). Was offered $100-$200 by 3 people within 30 feet of walking out of the brewery and up to $300 later in the day. After standing out in the rain, wind and cold for 9 hours you'd have to pry these things out of my cold, dead hands. I won't give one damn thought about the dollars I could have made when I'm drinking them. I earned these bastards this year.

 

I get what you're saying, but I don't think it's correct to characterize a winner as having a "right" to make some cash out of it. Obviously, given that it's illegal, no such right exists. Instead, it was FFF's right to set the price for that bottle where they wanted, and the purchaser's right to decide whether they wanted a scratch-off ticket and the ultimate ability to purchase it.

Similarly, FFF has gone to great lengths to make tickets non-transferable. This is because people were scalping them for $300 apiece, making a buck on them rather than participating in the event itself. It doesn't seem like anyone is honked off about their "right" to resell the tickets at a profit (also potentially illegal, but I don't know IN law on that specifically). Instead, it's been a good thing that makes the event more accessible for their fans. Similarly, some places will only sell special beer for on-site consumption rather than takeaway, to address the reselling issue. Isn't that a good thing? It seems like the industry pretty strongly doesn't want this sort of thing to go on.

Anyway, maybe I'm way off-base, but I have a hard time not seeing the instant quadrupling of the beer price as anything but a bummer. I'd imagine FFF agrees.

 

I dunno, I think it's a little reductive to say X selling to Y doesn't affect Z, because who knows how lack of reselling would affect demand for the beers themselves. It's the same problem that you see with BCBS (where people chase down Prop and the like so that they can flip it for a profit). With that being said, I'm really not criticizing the people selling, because I genuinely don't begrudge them the opportunity they've been given (just can't help being a little envious of said opportunity).

Also, you're correct (in my opinion) that there aren't really many beers worth passing on $200 for. There are so many good comparable beers to almost everything, that it's not worth killing yourself over anything specific. But tell that to the people paying hundreds for BAVDL...