Darkness Day 2009

I felt like I was at a beer geek summit outside the Surly brewery Friday night for a Darkness Day Eve tailgate.  Ed cooked up some awesome ribs on his smoker and as a great host brought along everything we could need. Omar even came out for some ribs once they finally finished waxing Darkness bottles about 10PM. In addition to our kegs of Dogfish Head 60 Minute and Surly Smoke, Todd brought out an infected keg of Smoke that had been sitting in the brewery.  It kinda tasted like a slightly Belgian version of NG Unplugged Olde English Porter, but with less sour and more smoke flavor. Everyone else had also brought many bottles to sample we got to try Bell's Barrel-Aged Cherry Stout, Troegs Nugget Nectar, Midnight Sun Descent, Stone RIS, 3F Alpha King, some New Glarus Wisconsin Cran-bic brought straight from Madison, and of course, 2009 Darkness (I like this year's much better than last years, it's not near as sweet.  Plus they went to a painted bottle this year with very cool artwork).  There were many, many more than that, but the end of the night is kinda blurry.

We woke up to a line around the block behind us, with what I'm sure was way more than the 800 people who could buy Darkness on Saturday. Hopefully no one was dissappointed. The above pic is the beginning of the line and below is the last half...crazy long.

I got to meet alot of great people, including some guys that drove up from Kansas. Everyone was very generous with their expensive brews and one girl even gave us some breakfast pizza. The whole event was well organized and everyone seemed to have a great time.  The birch-aged Cynic on cask and the uber-hoppy Wet were my personal faves, but unfortunately I had to duck out early.

I also wanted to thank another guy from Kansas City who went to DD and came in to the store Sunday morning.  He gave me a couple bottles of Odell IPA and a Boulevard Saison Brett just out of the beergeekness of his heart.  The angels are everywhere.