Darklord Day 2017

Although this same "sap" in the near future gets to drink Hanjee, FVM, and Chemtrail from his lovely wife and awesome cousin so by all means make him feel bad....also based on the above post I'm part of his "crew " never been part of a crew some I'm excited now!

 

I've had 14 through 17…. and yes 17 is my favorite when having fresh. 14 was smooth and is probably my second favorite, 15 was hot and 16 was entirely too sweet… this is all having fresh. 17 was actually 'balanced' for a DL in my opinion and I really enjoyed it.

 

Thought I might share my DLD. I have been going with my buddy @SAEmick for about 8 years now. The day starts as normal, get up before the sun and really anyone else. Grab my buddy as well as another buddy and head to Munster. Stop at White Castle because, well because why not? Get in line, crack beers. People in front of us were from Indy. Brought a killer home brew that they shared. People behind us were local from the Chitown area. They shared some great beers too. Watched someone dome about 1/3 of a bottle of No Rules just to say he did it. Enter the festival at 6 AM. Get into the cattle gates and proceed to wait and share a few more beers.

**Complaint about DLD that applies every year. People who were nowhere to be found waiting in line with us, somehow make their way to the front of line. Odd that this STILL happens as Variants this year were random. To those that do this, you suck. Period. You make it bad for other folks. Of course this is how fights happen and people end up knocked out. I've seen that at other DLD's.

Shared some beers till gates open up to the bottle sales. Enter second set of cattle gates. More beers in this line. Enter the brewery for bottle sales. Get my allotment and meet friends outside. Share more beers. Enjoyed the good weather that we had. My buddy went and got some tap pours. Enjoyed watching someone bite the dust yet again and breaking their DL bottles because they drank too much. Shared more beers. Shared some handshakes with folks we hadn't seen in a while.

Great day, good weather, smiles all around. Most important thing, sharing beers. This is what the day is all about. Show up, open beers, makes some new friends. I'll say thanks to the folks at 3F for doing a well run event. Cheers!

 

I think that was a Cigar City Absolutey OK but I could be wrong. I def shared a tap with you though.

 

Where do I get one? I would be down for this for sure.

 

I got a pour of 17 on tap and was really glad that I did. It is a lot more coffee forward, less sweet but still sweet... it was a lot more balanced fresh than previous years I've tried. I was really excited when I took my first sip.

 

The all day sun definitely sucked some life out of me as the day progressed. Still better than bad weather though.

 

My friends picked up together, and were immediately crestfallen. They both got the same variant! They were sad. They didn't know what a handjee was. Some guy tried to give them $200 for one on the spot, which they felt bad about and were confused by. So they just did a straight trade for Ronaldo.

 

In general I agree with your post with the exception of this part. I certainly put in far more than "a little effort" to try and trade 4 vintage + 2 2017 DL for any variant. My wife had to convince me to just give up after I spent far too long trying to make it happen. I certainly heard of some people lucking out and trading 2 vintage for a variant but I don't think that was the norm. If you're unlucky enough to both get variants it's safe to assume you might not be lucky enough to find that rare individual willing to trade their variant away.

 

This is the same for me. Noreally I go straight to the FFF tap and get DL as soon as the gates open, but this year Ronaldo was on so I got that of course. Never made it back to the FFF tap. I was thinking of maybe opening a bottle this week because of that.

 

Man, this is so true! not only for DL, but should be an all-fest and life motto

Count me in for 1... I think that tops my
"Good Game
Good Game
Good Game
F*ck You
Good Game"

shirt!

 

My only gripe about DLD was the "Designated Group A Line." At about 10 minutes til the gates opened my wife and I head towards the Group A sign in the staging area. We, as well as hundreds of others, are all trying to just find this line amiss the crowd of people waiting to enter through the gate. We finally make our way into the snaking Group A line corral and 9am hits. People start flooding into the fest as we are snaking through the corral. As we get to the end of the corral where the line was supposed to keep winding we see workers removing the metal railings in front of us. The group A line became part of the regular gate line. We ended up getting in the Group A allotment line after Group A people that didn't get in the group A line in the staging area.
#RememberTheNorth

 

I'm thinking about doing the same thing.

 

Isn't that pretty much every beer fest/release, though?

 

yea! that him. not sure if i met you too as i was with him most of the time except while i was going through the line during Group C. i had a pipeworks shirt on.

 

Yeah it is. So sad that grown folk act like small children. I guess I post this again and again hoping something changes...

 

I will say that the staging area idea was a very good idea. We got there at 715am and there was no line to get into the staging area. There started to be a line entering the staging area closer to 8am but it was moving through fast. It helped that they were doing ID checks outside of the staging area in the line. As about 830am approached the line became very long and wrapped around the corner onto Valparaiso (correct street name?). Even then it was moving quite smoothly. When we got into the staging area around 845am there was still room for more people in there.

 

By far one of the best parts of this year's Dark Lord Day is that some of you dingleberries wore shirts that said Abortion on them and didn't care what the other 9,974 people who don't post on BeerAdvocate thought of you.

 

A few reasons I think, most are table related...

1) Lots of room for opened bottles

2) seats

3) If you put your bag underneath, the thieves are really easy to spot.

4) It was centrally located. 2 tap trucks, lots of food and the fecal barrels were close.

That said, it got really crowded, especially with all of the dead bottles. I tried to clear off our table a bit, but it was a lost cause. There was tons of room by the stage and the holding pen.

 

@midmichmatt Why am I just now hearing about this iced cream?!