On Friday night, Kridz, Paddy, and I headed up to Flossmoor Station. Flossmoor routinely has something going on before DLD, so we wanted to go to that. We didn't quite make festivities, possibly Bar-B-Q on the back, but we did get to try some of the White Lady (a belgian wit) and Shimkos Simcoes. The White Lady wasn't the beer for me. Paddy ordered it, and I had a sip, but it's a Belgian wit, and try though I might, I can't drink that stuff. It also had chamomile in it, and I really can't drink that. We had some 3F Rabid Rabbit a couple weeks ago, and I couldn't finish my glass of that. The Shimkos' Simcoes was a great IPA. Noah recommended it to us before his phone died. After we sat down to eat, Noah walked up to our table. He was leaving, but while leaving saw my car and came back in. I had the fish and chips, which are AWESOME at Flossmoor. Kridz had a pizza and Paddy had... something. I think I also had a Killer Kapowski. Which was a really good Baltic Porter. For some reason, those (baltic porters) seem to have a sharp bite to it, like a rootbeer.
After we finished eating, we headed up to my sisters in Lockport. Walked around her neighborhood for a while, then went to bed. Woke up, got dressed, ate breakfast, got some text messages, then headed to Dark Lord Day. The text messages both said the same thing, 4 bottles per ticket :(. Oh well, that's better than 3.
We got there around 9. The CU Beer Club was set up directly across the street on the grass, had our little tailgate section all set up. We drove past, found a place to park, then lugged our cooler, chairs and other stuff up to the area. Tom was in line, holding the beer club's place. There were at least a dozen of us, so we were one of the larger contingents there.
When the doors opened at 11, there was the surge. It took a good 20 minutes before the line moved next, but then it went pretty rapidly. In between the beer line, and the brewpub line was the free sample (ticket punch) line. There was a lot of jumping from one line to the next. The actual Dark Lord line seemed just as long as last year, I wondered how it was any better... it wasn't necessarily, just a bit different. I'm sure the people at the end of the line were happy to know that they were guaranteed to get beer, unlike last year.
It seemed to go well, and somewhat quick, as they opened the line up to people without tickets around 4 (if not before then).
Inside the brewpub, which had the longest and slowest line,
there were three varieties of Dark Lord available. On the left, is Vanilla Bean '08, which is my favorite. It is possibly my favorite beer in the world. In the middle is this years DL. On the right is the Oak Aged. Both the vanilla and the oak were last years, that had been set aside and were aged for this event. They were outstanding!There were tents set up with all kinds of beers. Skot had 17 beers that he hasn't had before. I'm not sure how many I had. The PopSkull collaborative beer was outstanding. Between Kridz, Paddy and I we got 8 bottles of that at the house.
Other than a couple of bouts of rain, the worst of which occurred when I was sitting in the brewpub drinking those 3 glasses in the picture, it was a beautiful day. It was slightly overcast, so only the whitest of people got a slight sunburn. It wasn't too cold, nor too hot, so that was really nice. Everyone seemed really friendly. We made pretzel necklaces, but they got stale quick, due to the humidity. A drier day would have kept them fresher. Still, everyone loves pretzel necklaces. Don't get medium sized pretzels... just get small ones and the big fat ones. Medium sized ones break too easy. We made ours with string for beading, so that was convenient.
We met some great people there, some of which seemed to have made it to my blog already, mostly by searching for Urbana Mohawk Dark Lord, or Urbana Mohawk beer guy.
I never did find where the guest breweries were set up. Last year they were in the corner, this year... dunno.
It was a blast, thanks to 3 floyds for making a great beer, and for having a great day.
Perhaps next year I'll make the pilgrimage to DLD 2010. Sounds like you had a blast. Happen to save any bottles?
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