2017 Dark Horse 4 Elf Party

Call me an Elf one more time! I’m in.

 

Heard it’s fun. In.

 

If I wanted to show up at 11 and just grab bottles, how fast could I expect to be in and out?

 

You'll get your bottles, but you'll have to wait for them to fulfill 500 or so other orders first.

 

You can put your order in, and come back in about 6 hours or so, and you’ll probably be about ready.

 

My wife and I go every year. It's always a blast.

 

They hand out order forms on Friday the day before. Several hundred people will get in line to fill out the forms that day, with the limited bottles being allocated based upon when people handed in their forms. The line to get/fill out order forms has actually turned into a pretty fun bottle share the last couple of years. If you walk up at 11am on Saturday, they may tell you that they're only handing out the pre-filled orders in numerical sequence ("we're doing forms 1-100 right now, wait your turn"). Once things die down, they're usually pretty casual though, so you can walk right up and ask for whatever's left.

 

The last few years they’ve been super efficient? And have basically said, if you fill the order form, come back in a few hours (between 2 and 6 depending on how early you arrive- The later the better)

 

I have the opportunity to trade for some aged bapt5, how does it do with a few years on it?

 

I drank a 16 a couple weeks ago. Sublime. I also did a 3 or 4 year vert last year and I honestly could barely tell the difference between them.

There have however been reports of something going on with 2015 vintage. Stay away from that year and you should be golden.

 

I personally think it’s best fresh. I’m not a fan of it aged.

 

I'm drinking a 2014 version now, and it's an excellent beer. Some dark fruits and sweet cherries are coming thru, and a good bit of the bourbon is still there, but it still has a tiny amount of alcohol burn. However, I think I was a bit more impressed with this beer when it was fresh.

 

I'm happy to read this. I still have a number of the 2014 bottles but I haven't touched on in a while. I'll have to fix that.

 

I just went to write my notes on today's beer and saw that I drank one last December too. On that one I wrote that it was a little past its prime. Maybe now (or soon) is the time to drink them.

 

It’s prime is the day it’s released. Plead is ready to go out of the box!

 

It is good fresh, but I think somewhere between the 2-3 year mark is its actual prime.

Drinking one bottled 11/10/15 right now; great tobacco, blackberry, dark chocolate & earth notes. Huzzah!

 

If you want to meet up friday at the line share, i'll be the guy passed out in the camping chair

 

How was the 2015 stored? Temp?

 

I'd be careful with the '15. There have been quite a few postings in various facebook groups about people having issues. I personally had 5 left at the beginning of fall. I randomly decided to open one, with less than ideal results. The flavor wasn't bad, but it had definite tartness. Opened a 2nd one, same result. I took the last three to a tailgate and asked my friends what they thought of them, without announcing ahead of time what they were drinking. One thought it wasn't bad for a cherry stout (which, obviously it's not), all of them thought there was something off. We also had one bottle of '16 that was still absolutely great. I've also had one '15 Bourbrum that was going tart. I'm backing off of buying so much beer that I can't get to drinking fresh anyway, but I'm definitely not planning to order very much at Dark Horse this weekend. I've just gotten a little skittish about them, but that's just my opinion.