Dark Lord Day 2009

Date: April 25, 2009

Overview

Dark Lord Day 2009 was held on Saturday, April 25th. This was the first year of the Golden Ticket system. Golden tickets were sold online in advance, and would guarantee you an allotment of 4 bottles of Dark Lord. They did not restrict you to one ticket per person, so a single person could use two Golden Tickets to receive a double allotment (8 bottles). Bottle sales for ticket holders were scheduled from 11:00 am until 6:00 pm. Many people were less concerned with getting in line early because they had a ticket, and chose to get in line later in the day. The ticket system resulted in much faster lines than the previous year.

Because of rainy conditions late in the afternoon, many people left. Around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, Three Floyd's brought out more Golden Tickets and sold them to the public. Reportedly you could walk up right before the 6:00 pm cutoff and receive a Golden Ticket and an allotment of Dark Lord.

Each golden ticket also came with a free draft pour or Dark Lord (you could pay $5 to upgrade this to an Oak Aged, or Vanilla Bean Dark Lord). The ticket was punched to indicate you had used your free draft pour.

Around 4,000 tickets were sold, but attendance was closer to 7,000. While tickets were required to purchase Dark Lord, you could still attend the festival without one.

Details

The festival started at 11:00 am.

Wax Color

White

Allotment & Price

4 bottles per Golden Ticket. $15 a bottle.

Attendance

Estimated 7,000.

4000 tickets sold.

Food

• Mussels steamed in Gumballhead with bacon, fennel, celery, garlic, and dried chili
• Pulled Pork Sandwich with Coleslaw

Weather

High: 78 °F Low: 42 °F

Sunny and warm in the morning, thunderstorms in the afternoon with a sharp drop in temperature around 5:45 pm.

Ticket Sales

Cost: $10

Vendor: Sold directly through darklordday.com

Sales Date: 3/17/2009

Number of tickets sold: ~4,000

After the unanticipated crowds in 2008, resulting in several hundreds of people missing out on Dark Lord after spending 5 hours in line, Three Floyd's decided to move to a ticket based system for 2009. A ticket would guarantee you an allotment of 4 Dark Lord bottles.

The tickets were sold via a lottery system, which required you to sign up with your e-mail in advance. After which winners would be notified by e-mail. The ticket sales announcement was e-mailed to lottery winners early in the morning (around 4:30 am Central) on St. Patrick's Day, 3/17/2009, with a link to purchase tickets. You could purchase two tickets per person.

Ticket sales announcement:

“Darklord Day 2009 will be greatly improved to accommodate larger crowds, including expanded parking, more porta johns, shorter lines and more food choices.

In order to facilitate a fair and much more convenient system for buying Dark Lord on DLD 2009, we will be implementing a lottery system. Don’t worry, you’ll have a much better chance of getting a winning ticket than almost any other lottery you can play.

Basically our DLD 2009 lottery system will break down as follows:

• Everyone interested in purchasing DarkLord by the bottle will have to first register here at our website
• We will capture your name and email address and place you into a randomized database
• Once we’ve determined our estimated level of production for bottled DarkLord, we will then calculate the total number of winning tickets that we will make available
• We will then select, completely at random, email addresses from our databases and send winning registrants a confirmation email informing them of their winning slot in the lottery
• We will then require all winners to confirm their mailing address and we will send out the winning tickets
• All those that fail to respond within the designated time frame will be dropped from the winning list and new winners will be picked
• All those that have a winning “golden ticket” will be able to get in line, during their scheduled “tee time” as indicated on their ticket, and they will be able to purchase up to one case of DarkLord

While we know that this will upset some of our customers, we feel that this is simply the easiest way to insure that everyone, regardless of geography or budget, will have the best chance to get their hands on some bottled DarkLord this coming April.

We hope that this will resolve much of the confusion and frustration of our patrons who failed to get any DarkLord at the last DLD.

Check back here soon, or go ahead and register now to get yourself on the DLD 2009 Early Bird Notification list.”

Notable details in this announcement was the ability to buy up to a case of Dark Lord, this was of course cut to 4 bottles before the event. Also, a mention of sales times denoted on the ticket, something that wasn't actually implemented until 2011.

Taplist

Notable FFF taps

• 2008 Dark Lord
• 2008 Vanilla Bean Dark Lord
• 2008 Oak Aged Dark Lord
• Banana Split Seven-Inch (collaboration with The Publican)
• Devil's Handshake
• Slave Princess (Dark Lord parti gyle brew)
• Omeganaught
• Hyena
• Black Sun

Guest taps & tapping schedule

11:00 am

• Pizza Port Carlsbad’s Poorman’s Double IPA
• Stone Levitation
• Rock Bottom Chicago, Bourbon Imperial Stout
• Three Floyds/DogfishHead Popskull!
• Firestone Walke Union Jack IPA
• Flossmoor Station White Lady Imperial Witt

12:00 noon

• 2006 Stone Brandy Barrel Aged Double Bastard
• Pizza Port Carlsbad Trigger Happy
• Synebynkoff Porter
• DogfishHead Palo Santo
• Three Floyds Oak Aged Behemoth
• Flossmoor Station X-IPA

1:00 pm

• Stone R.I.S. 2007
• Pizza Port Solana Booya Steez
• J.W. Lee’s Harvest Ale
• Dogfish Head Fort
• Three Floyds Oak Aged Behemoth with cherries
• Victory golden Monkey

2:00 pm

• Stone Old guardian barleywine aged in red wine barrels
• Pizza Port Faceplant
• Gordon Biersch Bollingbrook
• Three Floyds Oak Aged Dark Lord
• Three Floyds Oak Aged Alpha Klaus
• Bell’s Hopslam

3:00 pm

• Stone Smoked Porter
• Pizza Port Solana Parable Pale
• Firestone Walker Abacus
• Struise Black Albert

4:00 pm

• Stone IPA
• Pizza Port San Clemente Infamous Chocolate Imperial Stout
• Stone Bourbon Barrel Arrogant Bastard
• Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout

5:00 pm

• Stone Vertical Epic
• Surly Teabagged Furious cask
• Founders Dry-hopped IPA Cask

6:00 pm

• Stone 10th Anniversary

7:00 pm

• Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine

Bands

• Pelican
• Waco Brothers
• Sybris
• Bible of the Devil

Photos

Photo Album