Darklord Day 2017

Just want to say thank you to all of the people in DA shirts. I was the guy in the green hat and name tag cause yeah I could. Group of 4 we ended up with 1 Ronaldo, FVM, Muerte, and 14/15. We are very happy because now we have a 4 year vertical in the family.
We had a blast though. It was much more fun than last year. I got drunk and sunburnt but I remained coherent.

So when do we start the dld 2018 thread?

 

Hey I remember you!

 

What a day!!! Got an FVM in group E. I managed to go longer than last year but I still fell out before Amon Amarth went on. Currently sitting at Midway waiting for my flight, nursing the hangover from hell, and couldn't be happier.

 

Saw a seagull eat barf, darklord day 2017 9/10

 

Those may, or may not have been my chunks.

Had a great time, was pleasantly surprised that our 3 A groupers were able to nail down three Handjees and our 4th B grouper got the CTM which sounds awesome.

The process was pretty smooth considering the mass of people that was present. Would probably be a bit sour though if we weren't as fortunate on the variant draw. Didn't hit much of the taps but got to share some pretty boss bottles with a number of folks and that was nice.

Shout out to all those too drunk to operate their own motor functions and those left responsible for the aforementioned.

#Feedingseagullsonechunkatatime

 

The Dark Lord Seagulls are metal.

 

To add...someone shared Lazer Raptor and another shared Goodbye Tomorrow. Thanks!

 

One thing I will never understand is the relatively low bottle counts for Bourbon DL. Shouldn't that be relatively easy to make 2 or 3 thousand? There's plenty of Dark Lord and you don't need to worry about adjuncts. You need the barrels, but breweries smaller than FFF can come up with a few thousand bottles of their BBA stouts. It would probably make more people happy as well because pretty much everyone is at least okay with it, if not seeking it out.

Yes, I get that Handjee and Muerte are bourbon as well, but there's more of both of those for some reason.

Edit- I guess ChemTrailMix is bourbon as well, so we got like 4 k combined of those 3 and only 600-something regular bourbon.

 

What an awesome DLD! Great weather. Ran into several BA'ers in which I probably can't recall who and shared some great insane beer again with random strangers! Lined up for Group E at like 4:30 but didn't get out until almost 5:45 at which time our shuttle was about ready to ditch us! Thrilled to score a FVM and even with our large group I don't think a single one of us got the limited scotch barrel variant.

We brought numerous first time DLD folks and they all loved it and were totally blown away with the bottle sharing even with the forewarning that people are just very generous with their whales! Guess it is another thing to experience first hand as a stranger pours BCBS variants, Funky Buddha, Side Project, Rare Barrel into your glass. Just freaking awesome.

Of course the great experience went south for one of our newbies as his full allotment got stolen towards the end of the day, plus another 2 DL were stolen from another friend. Just sad with how much sharing is going on that theft still occurs. I wish FFF would distro the allotments upon leaving the festival and then no one would need carry and protect their DLs. Needless to say we are already replacing his DLs as myself and several others are pitching in our DLs and vintages from our cellar to replace his stolen tote bag. Karma is a bitch you assholes that ruined my buddies experience, you will get what is coming to you!

Seems like all the great experiences sharing on shuttle in, in line getting into festival, at the main tent at the start of day were again the memorable highlights of DLD! Simply the best beer advocates and people! Looking for to next DLD.

 

I often wondered this myself. I would also assume it's the easiest variant to make. I had one last year and thought it was fantastic. I'm quite surprised to see the low bottle count last year and this year.

 

Got to meet several of you guys thanks to the DA shirts. I met @RUinOhio, @EamonTheGreat and @zach60614 as well as a few others that seem to be escaping my Dark Lord Day brain. Dragon Abortion love was everywhere at DLD. People high-fiving and randomly yelling out Dragon Abortion. Even the FB DLD page peeps were all about it.

 

Special shout out to "The Breakfast Club." Awesome group of people from Cali and Penn that grilled up steak, egg and cheese bagels for anyone that wanted one for free and shared all of their beers as well with anyone walking by. Got to hang out with them outside from 730-830 in the morning. (My wife on the far right)

 

My snapchat is an absolute shit show from yesterday. Im not sure if I should be embarrassed or not.

 

A few notes/observations from the fest:
-Best run DLD I've ever attended. The new changes they made were great and lines were pretty much non existent all day except when DL variants were tapped, the beginning of each groups bottle pickup line and as someone mentioned earlier, the Dark Matter booth at the beginning of the fest.
-The guest taps seemed to be pretty weak again this year minus a small percentage of good ones I saw. Also, they didn't seem to turnover very fast from what I saw.
-There seemed to be a lot more insanely drunk and passed out people laying all over the place this year more than in previous years. I don't know if this was due to the amazing weather, a lot of first timers, a combination of both or something else. Have seen some hilarious ass pics online though.
-Port-a-potties seemed to be pretty clean from all of the ones I used. One guy in my group had a pretty sick story from one of the ones he used but that's pretty much it.
-Bottle shares under the big tent were great as usual. Had to walk around big piles of garbage/empty bottles all over the place. That's usually to be expected though.
-Everyone in our group got variants (we had people in every group). As someone stated earlier, you could see which bags had all green wax and which ones had a couple with the dark wax. Just had to pick the right table. The first people in our group that went through in the A line noticed this and reported back to all of us that had later groups. That definitely helped everyone get a variant.

Great job by FFF this year. Hopefully it stays the same going forward minus the chance to get vintage bottles. They can definitely do away with that. If it decides to rain in any years going forward, that holding area they put you in before the fest would need to be completely under a tent or they'd need to allow people to bring in their own
canopies/pop up tents.

Also, does anyone know of any post DLD events going on in Chicago today?

 

My 3rd DLD and the best one yet. Super well run, weather was perfect, got drunker way quicker than in previous years. Still kept it together. Ended up with a Muerte as my variant. Someone I was with just said fuck it and opened his Chemtrailmix and I thought it was really good. People were super generous with their sharing as always. I even managed to get a tiny bit of Mornin' Delight. Seems like the consensus is that this was the best Dark Lord Day in recent memory and I whole heartedly agree.

 

Suggested "improvements" for next year:

Variants for everyone or a reduced ticket price for vintages...two vintages does not equal a variant

Variant trading area. So many people bumrushed people on their way out of the brewery looking to trade

If it's still hot out next year, one of those misting stations. Some girl misted me with a spray bottle at like 2 pm. Was glorious. Want that on a bigger scale

Don't make people get back in line after they leave. Was only a problem before noon. Then it was just walking back in, but still

Have a designated grass area for "chilling out" AKA for people that need to nap. That wasn't me, but I felt so bad for people who were passed out and burning up in the sun

Have a designated "rare" draft tent (or 3). Then people can just line up and if something pops right before you get there, you are still greeted with something awesome in it's place. Essentially waiting in a much longer line gets you a great beer no matter what

Better guest taps. Nothing was wrong with those beers, but nothing was special about them. When somebody is standing 10 feet away with free treehouse pours, I am not lining up for crooked tree...

That's my insight. Take it or leave it FFF, I'll still be back.

 

So, looks like 8602 total bottled variants for DLD 17. If we make the assumption that 10k tickets were sold, then 1398 people received vintages (or about 14%).

I agree with many that this was probably the best run one to date with easily the best weather. If they get rid of vintages going forward this event would be perfect. 'Fortunate' enough, out of the group of 9 people I was hanging out with most of the day everyone got variants. 4 group A, 3 group B and 2 group C resulted in 4 Handjees, 2 FVM, 2 BADL and 1 Dia Oscuro.

 

Fuggitttt who else popped open a nice day after Dark Lord cold one? It's way too nice out not to. I had a Mikerphone Check 1,2 leftover from yesterday, along with some of that newest Hop Butcher stuff we didn't get to. Didn't get through all my stouts and barleys either. Will be packing lighter if I go back next year.

 

I did not get vintages, but it seemed like a LOOOOT more than 14% were getting them. There were tons of vintage bags when I went in for pickup in B.

 

I couldn't meet up with a bunch of people I actually knew, but I somehow saw that Animal hat guy everywhere I was, all day, no matter what.