Special beer sold only one day a year
DARK LORD | Brewed in Indiana, premium stout draws beer lovers from around the world lucky enough to score a Golden Ticket
April 6, 2010
Forget whatever you might have heard about Belgian monks cornering the market on thick, tasty brews.
These days, beer nirvana is in a Munster, Ind., industrial park where a band of metal heads crafts what some experts say is some of the finest beer in the world.
If you want a taste of Three Floyds Brewing Co.’s finest flavor — a thick, potent molasses-sweet stout — your odds are never good. A bottle of Dark Lord — a Russian-style imperial stout — is available just once a year, on “Dark Lord Day,” April 24.
You have to show up at the brewery to get it. And before you’re allowed to pony up 15 bucks per 22-ounce bottle, you have to score a “Golden Ticket” online that guarantees your chance to buy it.
“This is not a beer you drink after weeding your garden,” brewer Barnaby Struve says. “This is something that is very special and very strong and should be treated like an after-dinner sort of thing. Something to share with friends and family on special occasions.”
Dark Lord was first brewed in 2004. It’s Three Floyds founder Nick Floyd’s response to a local brewer’s boasting about his own stout. The beer is brewed with hundreds of pounds of Intelligentsia Black Cat espresso, Mexican vanilla and Indian dessert sugar that mingle to create an intense stout with a viscosity akin to that of, say, Quaker State motor oil. Dark Lord was rated in the 100th percentile — that’s the best — of beers by Ratebeer.com, which also named Three Floyds the best brewery in the world for 2010.
This year’s Dark Lord is the biggest “most brutal” vintage ever, with 15 percent alcohol content and 700 calories a bottle, head brewmaster Chris Boggess says.
Intrigued? Thirsty? Ready to Google yourself a Golden Ticket?
Well, maybe next year. This year’s batch of Golden Tickets sold out in less than an hour after Three Floyds announced their release on Twitter. In fact, so many people swarmed the Web site that offered the tickets that the servers crashed, creating a blog-post backlash from out-of-luck beer aficionados.
Sometimes, though, if you’re lucky, you can find drinkers willing to share a taste, sell a bottle or even hawk an extra Golden Ticket on Dark Lord Day, a free, daylong festival that drew nearly 7,000 people to Three Floyds’ industrial park last year.
But you’d better get there early and be patient, says Struve. By the time the brewery doors open at 10 a.m., usually you’ll find thousands of people already packing the parking lot, where they can sample craft beers from across the country while rock bands play.
“We’re lucky people in Munster allow us to do it,” Struve says. “You don’t need a ticket to come. You can bring your own beer to trade with friends.”
People come from all over the country. Some North Side bars — including Quenchers on Fullerton — have organized bus trips to Dark Lord Day.
“It’s organized chaos,” Struve says. “We have about 12 cops around with their Tasers all warmed up and waiting. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”
