Dark Lord Day 2010 Has A Date..

Even if you're new to craft beer, you're probably already familiar with Three Floyd's Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout, and the beer holiday that surrounds its release. The date for that holidy? According to DarkLordDay.com, it's Saturday, April 24th. Plan accordingly.

We'll have more details when they're available.

DarkLord Day 2009

The lead up to this year's DarkLord Day was filled with intrigue. Would there be lines? Would things move quicker? Would there be guest beer? How many bottles per ticket?



In the end, there were lines. Lines that were probably longer than last year.



But the lines moved fairly quick, and as anyone there can tell you, standing in line is half the party.



And there was guest beer, with a lineup that looked like this:

Pizza Port Carlsbad's Poorman's Double IPA
Stone Levitation
Rock Bottom Chicago Bourbon Imperial Stout
Three Floyds/Dogfish Popskull
Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA
Flossmoor Station White Lady Imperial Wit
2008 Brandy Barrel Aged Double Bastard
Pizza Port Carlsbad Trigger Hoppy
Synobynkoff Porter
Dogfish Palo Santo
Three Floyds Oak Aged Behemoth
Flossmoor Station X-IPA
R.I.S. 2007
Pizza Port Solana Booya Stoez
J.W. Lee's Harvest Ale
Dogfish Fort
Three Floyds Oak Aged Behemoth w/ Cherries
Victory Golden Monkey
Old Guardian Barleywine Aged in Red Whine Barrels
Pizza Port Faceplant
Gordon Biersch Bollingbrook
Three Floyds Oak Aged Dark Lord
Three Floyds Oak Aged Alpha Klaus
Bell's Hopslam
Stone Smoked Porter
Pizza Port Solana Parable Pale
Firestone Walker Abacus
Struise Black Albert
Stone IPA
Pizza Port San Clemente Infamous Chocolate Imperial Stout
Stone Bourbon Barrel Arrogant Bastard
Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout
Stone Vertical Epic
Surly Teabagged Furious Cask
Founders Dry-hopped IPA Cask
(somebody's) 10th Anniversary
Stone Old Guardian Barleywine

As for bottles per ticket? The number was four. So if you bought your full allotment of tickets, you could have gone home with 8 bottles this year, which was actually 2 more than you were allowed last year.


In the end, there was very little drama to the day, other than some random rainshowers and the one arrest I witnessed. The crowd seemed controlled but lively, the rare beer flowed, and everyone seemed to go home happy.



Props to the folks at Three Floyds, who listened to last year's post-event (perhaps undeserved) complaints and put together an even better event this year. In addition, they raised a ton of money for a local animal shelter. Just another example of how craft beer can really benefit a community. Congrats to the staff at Floyds for their excellent work, and their deserved success.


My only complaint? I know you all saw our shirts... Say hello! We were giving away beer, for chrissakes. We'll see you next year. Don't be shy.


Lastly, here's a video of the photos I took - so if you couldn't be there, this may be the next best thing. And if you were there, let us know how it went on your end.

DarkLord Day 2009 - the Site, the Golden Ticket, the Magic

In "in case you missed it" news, there is currently a site up at DarkLordDay.com that can tell you all about the way our friends at Three Floyds plan to handle the massive army of people that attend the yearly release of their DarkLord Russian Imperial Stout.

Three Floyds is definitely concerned that people haven't got the news that there will be a new "Golden Ticket" system this year, and have just emailed folks that have registered at DarkLordDay.com with a request that they help spread the word by passing on the message. Which looks like this:

Hi,

I just wanted to let you know about DarkLordDay.com - I recently registered there and I figured I should let you know about the site because they've made some changes. You have to register on the site and then buy Golden Tickets in order to get bottles of Dark Lord. The proceeds of the ticket sale will go to local Munster charities.

The Golden Tickets go on sale on St. Patrick's Day - Tuesday, March 17th.

And Dark Lord Day 2009 takes place on Saturday, April 25th.

Just figured you'd want to know so that you don't miss out. You can get all the details on their site - make sure to check out the Frequently Asked Questions.

For those of you who didn't know - now you do. Check out DarkLordDay.com, get registered, and good luck.

DarkLord Day 2009 - What We Know So Far

Thursday, 12/18/08 - BeerAdvocate forums user "grynder33" makes a post titled "Dark Lord Day 2009 Lottery System??" on the US Great Lakes section of the forum, in which he states that he has overheard (at a homebrew party) that 2009 DarkLord bottles will be for sale through an advanced registration lottery. He then asks if anyone else can confirm the rumor.

2 hours later - User "yock" says to check the website 3floyds.com, where the following info was posted:

Darklord Day 2009 will be greatly improved to accommodate larger crowds, including expanded parking, more porta johns, shorter lines and more food choices.

In order to facilitate a fair and much more convenient system for buying DarkLord on DLD 2009, we will be implementing a lottery system. Don't worry, you'll have a much better chance of getting a winning ticket than almost any other lottery you can play.

Basically our DLD 2009 lottery system will break down as follows:

* Everyone interested in purchasing DarkLord by the bottle will have to first register here at our website
* We will capture your name and email address and place you into a randomized database
* Once we've determined our estimated level of production for bottled DarkLord, we will then calculate the total number of winning tickets that we will make available
* We will then select, completely at random, email addresses from our databases and send winning registrants a confirmation email informing them of their winning slot in the lottery
* We will then require all winners to confirm their mailing address and we will send out the winning tickets
* All those that fail to respond within the designated timeframe will be dropped from the winning list and new winners will be picked
* All those that have a winning "golden ticket" will be able to get in line, during their scheduled "tee time" as indicated on their ticket, and they will be able to purchase up to one case of DarkLord

While we know that this will upset some of our customers, we feel that this is simply the easiest way to insure that everyone, regardless of geography or budget, will have the best chance to get their hands on some bottled DarkLord this coming April.

We hope that this will resolve much of the confusion and frustration of our patrons who failed to get any DarkLord at the last DLD.

Check back here soon, or go ahead and register now to get yourself on the DLD 2009 Early Bird Notification list.

And that's where the confusion started.

First, the domain - most folks are familiar with the three floyds site at www.threefloyds.com - so the new address at www.3floyds.com seemed like it might be a hoax.

Secondly, attempts at preregistration brought up a wordpress page asking for a username and email address.

So something was definitely "off".

A whois lookup of the domain registrant info looked legit - the domain 3floyds.com was property of the brewery - so what was going on? Was the info accurate?

Well, not exactly.

Sunday, 12/21/08 - Nick Floyd logs on to the BeerAdvocate forums and explains:

3floyds.com is now Three Floyds Brewing Co official website but you can still order things from threefloyds.com .We are having trouble getting our own domain name back?? Three Floyds will be selling DarkLord Day Tickets in the near future to assure everyone that waits in line will get to buy some DarkLord and as always we are trying to smooth out any kinks in the festival so everyone is happy. check 3floyds.com in January for further details.Happy Holidays to all :)

If you're interested in attending (which we highly recommend), there's your heads up.