A visit to the Dark Lord

A year ago I was in California, listening to heavy metal and drinking good beer. This year I did the same thing roughly  371 days later. I found myself listening to heavy metal music and drinking good beer. But this time I was in Indiana.

I made the trip down to Dark Lord Days. It is the one time of the year that 3 Floyds Brewing sells the Dark Lord, their Russian Imperial Stout. They sold them in 3 different groups during the day. All the while they have some live bands playing inside the brewery and general drinking going on outside. They didn't limit themselves to just their beer either as they had some beers from "friends" being served as well.

Being that we had tickets for Group C, the last to buy, we didn't need to get down to Munster Indiana right away.  The trip is just over two hours. At least according to Mapquest. Chicago traffic can make the trip much longer. I was happy that we were able to avoid the traffic thanks to the express lanes. The only backup we experienced was in downtown Chicago and that lasted a couple of minutes.

Munster seems like a small basic town. The road we took in took us by a bunch of mini strip malls. We did pass one bar that had a neon sign proclaiming "Mr. Fun is in Here!" Part of me wanted to stop, but the Dark Lord had summoned.

We were able to find parking rather easily. The brewery seems to be in an industrial park. Some lots were blocked off by the companies while others were open. I, as many others, took that to mean they were open to use for the event. I had heard some people may have paid up to 80 bucks to park. wtf?

The festivities were tooking place on the premises of the brewery. Mainly the parking lot of it and the brewpub. I heard only 6000 tickets were sold. That made this little place pretty packed. Not like there was anywhere to walk to. You had beer being sold in different spots, food in others, and then the music inside.  When your group was ready, you moved into the area and were herded to the back of the building to make your purchase. If you were lucky, you could buy one of 4 types of a bottle of their limited release Dark Lords.

Overall I had a good time. Got to try a couple 3 Floyd brews I hadn't had. Got to try some Pizza Port out of California. And I got a Kuma's burger on the way back. The only down side was I had to drive. Seems kinda sick that I would go to a beer festival and have to keep the restrictor plate on. But I did and survived. Next time I hope I don't pick the short straw.