DLD 2013 retrospective

Ha, it was like 5 dudes to one cup when it came to Bourbon Vanilla DL.

 

I think others had mentioned it, I was in group C and won a BA DL... I asked for Vanilla... No deal. Got a Port instead. What a damn rip off!

That last sentence was sarcasm btw.

I do wish I spent more time around the guest taps. I was double fisting Permanent Funeral and HF What is enlightenment when I first got in...

One last thing... Has anyone tried the Port BA DL yet?

 

Whales aren't for drinking bro.

 

If you don't want it I'll take it

 

Gonz it was good to see you and your dad. I was trying to track you down when I saw you in line earlier! Hope to see you again soon duder!

I think it's the guy that was giving pours and spilling someone else's Cantillon at KBS Day.

 

Hmmmm... the evidence is spotty, the spill was what I was holding in my left hand at the time, which was not Cantillon.

 

I'm glad i'm not the only person that tasted Green Apples. Hope these beers don't actually spoil with age.

 

I didn't taste green apples but I did think it was too sweet. My buddy found it perfect and just kept saying it doesn't need to be aged

 

2013 DL tasted like maple syrup to me. Definitely on the sweet side, but was tasty.

 

Said initially after tasting that I got a lot of green apple/tart cherry taste and didn't think it was too sweet. Much more "immediately drinkable" than last years.

 

I'm trying to remember exactly what drunk Tony said to me at about 5 p.m., but I'm having trouble with it. All I know is he was not fucking around, though by all accounts he was very hammered. Loved it.

 

I was the guy in E group with like 50 plastic 5 oz. cups in my small bag that I was handing out anytime someone needed one. it was one of the suggestions I remembered to keep in mind while prepping for this, with DLD being my first beer event - "a sleeve of plastic cups for sharing".

I haven't been able to add any real fresh perspective to what has already been said about the positives of the fest between this and the other thread, but that really was a fun hell of a time. Wish I had seen any of the HF taps, or that I had at least walked up to that tent where they were doing the DL pours; from a distance I could see it was your everyday FFF beers, but duh! maybe there was something I might be missing out on. I haven't stopped talking about that Leon from CCB though. So damn smooth.

Also, I wish I had gotten the names of the nice guys around us in line, I kept bringing up BA posts, etc. and one or two of them knew what I was referencing. I was the guy with the White Sox pullover, black hat, red bottle bag. Had a great time with y'all, thanks for making that wait as bearable as it was.

 

i wrote a three word description of the 2013 dl i had on draft: "cherry sweet meat."

certainly better than last year's but still not great.

 

Not till Christmas for me

 

One of the only things I would change is that Vanilla Bean DL should be equally spread out through all the groups.

 

Not much to add other than this pic. Made me chuckle.



One of these things is not like the others!

 

I think I remember now. Something like "Mark, I love you, but get the fuck out of my face [editor's note - the last word may have been "way" instead of "face"] right now". There was a tent-post between us, and I believe I had just asked how you were doing.

Glad you and the LT made it back safely!

 

first darklord day. i would go back and this was a fun time but they could improve a lot. Disclaimer: i do not want to take away from the comraderie and the very generous sharing and the great time i had seeing old friends and meeting new ones. these complaints are strictly logistical.

1- this is DARKLORD DAY- cant they make enough goddammn darklord, old vintages of darklord and barrel aged darklord so it is just on tap everywhere and nobody has to try hard to get it? considering they sell the taps at double the price they sell it for in the bottles and dont have to go through the time and expense of bottling it, this would be immensely profitable. See, eg, darkness day.

2- the beer line was an absolute joke- this could be so easily remedied: assuming they spread the allotments of variants somewhat equally between days, there would be no downside to allowing people to pick up the beer the day before or the day after as well. this would cut the line substantially. also they only had about 2 people checking tickets. this, as well as the number of stations inside from which you could pick up the DL could easily could have been quadrupled.

3- food was bad. mind you im not there for the food but still my burger was 1/4 the quality of a big mac and 4x the price. it also looked like it was better than any other item from the food tents near the taproom entrance. im no cullinary expert but every festival of any kind that ive ever been to has had better food so surely this is possible. food trucks? allow local restaurants to set up shops? or just care about what you sell?

4- i guess i expected a little better from the beer tents than a bunch of beer names scribbled in marker on cardboard or construction paper or whatever. again, it would take literally one hour of effort to put a list of guest taps and other fff taps on their website, with additional paper fliers available at the tents, and include some basic info like brewery, style, abv, general description of flavors and the order that new kegs woudl be tapped once others kicked....i saw similar info regarding the cookies at my daughter's preschool bake sale so i would think that FFF could muster the same effort.

5- start the bands when it opens. wtf i was there for hours and didnt hear a single one of these bands.

 

Bitter Beer Face

 

Nitpicking here, but the BA Dark Lords were $10 each for 10 oz. pours, which is roughly half of the bottle price. Not like they're making a killing on the barrel aged taps (though, to be fair, the bottle sales would seem to make up for it).

 

One head scratcher I had was the idea behind the 'controlled' break in the bottle allocation line to allow access to a section of porta potties on the west side of Indiana Pkwy. This was a premium line cutter staging area. Yeah there were two security personnel there tasked with that section but it seemed ripe for cutters. One guy we spoke to said he did it and I'm sure others did as well. They could have placed those porta potties elsewhere and eliminated that gap. Small quibble I know.

 

Since we're sharing some pics, this was my attempt to snap a picture of my 2011 PVW BBDL pour. I'm sure this echoed most people's vision on Saturday too


And kudos to FFF for putting on a great event. Among all the previously mentioned improvements I can't stress enough how key the Porta-Pottys were. This was a beautiful site when you had to go.

 

5th Dark Lord Day for me. What a great day! Except for having E tickets...I'll complain about that in a bit. (As the Dark Lord is my witness, I will clear all weekends, from St Patrick's Day to DLD, in order to go at a moment's notice to the brewpub to get A tickets from now on. I am done with the online sale nonsense!!!) Loved the festival atmosphere, wide open spaces, beer and merchandise tents, and great beer selection.

We got to the south line at 6:15am, met our group that had been there since 4am. We were still able to find street parking, but I imagine it was all gone by 7am. There were only about twenty five people in line ahead of us in the south line. I think the two gates really helped with crowd control. The south gate didn't have the annoying late morning-arriving gate crashers, probably due to the majority of people arriving on Superior Ave (north gate) vs Progress Ave (south gate) a block away. We sat with our cooler and chairs and drank the morning away. Along with some Munster Donuts, great weather, and portapotties galore--couldn't have asked for more!

Got through the gate and bag search with no problems. We were some of the first in line for the BA vanilla DL. I got two glasses, and ended up selling one to a guy waiting in line because I am nice...if I had kept both for myself, I wouldn't have been able to drive home I never intended to stay the whole day to E ticket time, so I left around 11am. I went back at 7pm to get line with my E ticket. I figured the line wouldn't be too bad since the sale would be half over by then. Wrong! I waited in line from 7pm and got my beer at 9:30pm. I should've just showed up at 9pm and only waited thirty minutes like a few people said they did in earlier posts, but I was afraid to go later than the posted 6-8pm sales time, if they did indeed stop sales at 8pm. Oh well, I did get to stand with two guys from Michigan, the hockey player and the massively drunk lawyer. Drunk lawyer lurched forward and accidentally threw a glass of DL all over his buddy. OH, THE HUMANITY! It was a sticky mess, it was all down his face, looked like he got stabbed in the head! I had napkins and handiwipes in my purse, because as with my own children, you have to be prepared for anything And the BeerGeeksPub.com hoodie guy in front of us was good to talk to too. It was an entertaining 2.5hr wait in line, to be sure! Drunk lawyer's ticket fell apart in his pocket at some point, and they wouldn't sell him his DL without the detached stub! I feel horribly, hilariously awful for that poor guy.

Dear 3Fs peeps, if you do read through these posts to glean ideas to make planning changes for next year---the DL purchase line needs major restructuring. The lines after A and B sucked. My husband had B tickets, and he and his guest got through in thirty minutes, when I had E tickets and waited 2.5. You can't sell an equal amount of tickets for each group, while allowing earlier ticket holders to enter later than their stated group time, and expect that each group will only take two hours. If, for whatever reason you don't get your DL at your ticketed group time, too bad so sad, you will have to go to the "second chance line" at the very end of the day, after the last ticketed group time. This would encourage people to get their beer at their actual ticketed time, not wait until the end of the day and make the D and E line be delayed two hours. Also, more signs and maps would be helpful, and more minions for line control. Someone in an earlier post mentioned handing out the golden tickets outside--that would prevent line cutting. If you don't wait your turn in line, you don't get a golden ticket. Good job, and even with the ticket line problems, it the best organized Dark Lord Day yet!

 

I wholeheartedly agree that allowing ticket holders to pick up their bottles across a few days would alleviate the issue with the bottle line. But it completely goes against what Dark Lord Day originally was intended to be:

I think if you spread out bottles over multiple days, you basically kill off the "festival where participants can meet other beer enthusiasts, sample beers from all over the world, buy your Dark Lord, eat, listen to live music, and generally have a great time."

I for one would rather stand in line. I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed the bottle line this year.

 

It wasn't just the last group that was bad. I had B, got in line at 11:40 am and didn't get my allocation until 1:40.

Canis

 

is that nate nelson's head photobombing?

 

True, but the B sale time was 12-2. You at least got out before the "end" of your group time. The E sale was 6-8, but I got mine at 9:30, and there were at least a hundred people still in line behind me.

 

Ha! Glad it wasn't just me. I walked up to Tony to introduce a new friend from TX. He just looks the guy dead in the eye and says, "Get out of my way." The only words he spoke to him. I had fun trying to explain that one.

 

That it is true. I'm sure there were some people in B who got out after 2, either way, once one group is late then so are the others (snowball effect). I don't know what else they can do to ease congestion. 1000+ people(for each group) to get in and out in under 2 hours is a challenge.

Canis

 

I was group B and got in line around Noon and had to wait over 2 hours. When I got to the brewery, I found the problem. They were letting in a grand total of 3-5 people at a time to scratch off their golden tickets and purchase DL, which caused a huge bottle neck for people scratching off tickets. Next year I recommend handing the scratch offs 50 or so people back from the brewery doors in order to have a more smooth transition into buying DL allocations.

 

Exactly...DLD is not about efficiency...the end goal is cool and all...but the journey kicks the shit out of it IMNSHO.

 

If you're in Group E you end up fighting off bro-bags and people who are only there to "kill it on Craigslist" for nearly 4hrs. Not super fun...we tried but just ended up drunk, pissed off, and on backpage.com.

 

Craft beer profiteers need to die.

 

There seems to be a marked difference of opinion between those who were in A and B and those who were in D and E.