Dark Lord Day 2010

I ended up not getting to Dark Lord Day until a little before 11 and it was already packed. There were no more legal parking places (I parked illegally, but there were too many cars for anyone to do anything about it) and the line was incredibly long. I carried my cooler full of beer and went in search of my friend Shane who had arrived much earlier. After finding each other, we went back to where he was hanging out with his co-pilot/Dad. From where we were standing, it seemed like we were waiting in line near the front... I asked Shane if we were in line and he didnt know. When the doors opened at 11, there were cheers and we started moving towards them...it turns out we were in line! I dont recommend trying the show up late and then cut in line strategy, but apparently it worked for my. I appologize to all that I cut, but in my defense, I didnt know and I only bought 6 of my 8 alloted bottles. The other two I used to get some 2009 vintage.

There they are...in all their glory...my freshly purchased dark lord (along with an empty bottle of Ottos Mt Nittany Pale Ale that I shared with guys around me in line)

Speaking of sharing, there was a lot of it. The sharing was by far the best part of the day. It seemed like anyone that I happened to be standing around was a homebrewer and had homebrew to share. It was awesome. Two guys I met while waiting in line to get a taste of the Dark Lord, Dave and Cy, were very cool and we tasted beer and talked about homebrewing for a while. Apparently they were taught to brew by the guy who is now the head brewer at Revolution Brewing in Chicago and they really wanted to introduce him to me. It would have been cool to meet him (especially since I could go and drink his beer later that night at the brewpub) but they couldnt get in touch with him. They also told me to try and come to some brew fest in Wisconsin, but that may be a little too far for me.

I tried looking for people I knew through twitter, but I had no luck. The cell phone reception was not great and sometimes couldnt get twitter to work properly. Maybe next time. I used my last ticket to get a taste of the alpha king, bought a sausage and went back to Chicago.

I finished the day at Goose Island with Amanda, and had some mussels and Matilda. It was a great dinner. On my way out, I bought myself a bottle of 2010 Bourbon County Stout and a t-shirt. It would have been awesome to be able to hang out for longer, but I had to get up and go to church with Amanda (she was preaching, it was pretty cool) so we called it a night after dinner.

Dark Lord Day was definitely worth the trip and I hope I can do it again next year. Cheers!