UKRAINIAN VILLAGE — The Three Floyds Brewing craft brew empire is set to celebrate its 20th year on Saturday with the “Indy 500” of beer fests — a Dark Lord Day on steroids.
“We’re really lucky to still be here,” brewery founder Nick Floyd said. “Twenty years. It hasn’t really hit me yet. All I know is it’s awesome and fun … and there’s a lot more to come.”
The fun starts at the Munster, Ind., brewery this weekend with a bigger (and more organized) celebration of Dark Lord — a potent Russian imperial stout, a flavor bomb of Chicago-roasted espresso and Mexican vanilla that’s as thick as motor oil.
It's known by some as “the most wanted beer in the world.”
Three Floyds faithful — especially the exotic aromatic hops fetishists with Goth-metal art sensibilities, and of course, a penchant for spicy smoked meats — are in for some special boozy bottles Saturday. Dark Lord Day features the one-time-only release of about 20 barrel-aged Dark Lord variants for your sipping pleasure.
In order to get one, you have to buy one of the $200 tickets — which sold out almost immediately — that guarantees drinkers, among other things, a four-pack of Dark Lord and a randomly selected 22-ounce bottle of the rare barrel-aged varieties.
Nick Floyd and his head brewer, Chris Boggess, wouldn’t give up the entire list of special barrel-aged brews available Saturday.
But when I visited the brewery this week, Floyd showed off a few of the limited-edition bottles decorated in limited-edition artwork, hand-numbered and dipped in shimmering black and silver wax.
“All the art on the bottles is amazing,” Floyd said. “It’s so bad-ass. People are going to collect it.”
Floyd, who helped write the recently released “Alpha King” dark fantasy comic book, loosely based on the Three Floyds origin story, makes it very clear that he’s as passionate about the quality of Three Floyds label art as he is the taste of very special brews including:
• “French Vanilla Militia” — Dark Lord aged in Armagnac-soaked barrels with vanilla, cocoa nibs and coffee. It's decorated in the dark, ghostly label art of Jesse Draxler, whose abstract paintings have been described as “contemporary monochromatic works … [with a] darkly and elegantly primal quality that borders on the grotesque.”
• “Trump* and Pump” — Dark Lord aged in barrels soaked in Sauternes, a French dessert wine commonly served with foie gras, adorned with another Draxler painting. *Not a reference to “The Donald.”
• “Dwarven Power Bottom” — Dark Lord aged in barrels soaked in Muscat, an Italian dessert wine. It’s tagged with “spaceman” bottle art designed by Jim Zimmer, who helped select artists and design labels for the special-edition beers.
• “Legio Gemina” — Dark Lord aged in barrels soaked in Pineau de Charentes, a French aperitif.
• “Marshmallow Handjee” — Dark Lord aged in bourbon barrels with vanilla beans bottled with a space-themed label.
A few of the other special barrel-aged Dark Lord variants getting served up Saturday include:
• “Ronaldo Imperial” — Dark Lord aged in barrels soaked in Madeira, a fortified Portuguese wine, with tart Michigan cherries.
• “Dark Lord de Muerte” — A fan favorite returns: Dark Lord aged in bourbon barrels with Guajillo chilies.
• “Quit Hitting Yourself” — Dark Lord aged in Porto and Madeira barrels.
• “Temuculan 3000” — Dark Lord aged in Pineau Charentes-soaked barrels with green cardamom and Ceylon cinnamon.
And, yes, there are more … but you’ll have to be surprised.
Turning 20
This year, Dark Lord Day marks more than just two decades of making beer that’s “Not Normal,” the beer company’s slogan.
The brewery reached the milestone after a “couple pretty brutal years” of becoming a grown-up business, said Boggess, who has been Three Floyds' head brewer for 10 years.
Since then, Three Floyds' production has grown more than tenfold — from around 4,000 barrels in 2006 to about 50,000 barrels this year, Boggess said.
The last few years have brought the biggest changes, thanks to an intense lobbying effort to change Indiana craft beer laws.
The so-called “Three Floyds Law” cleared the way for a more than $10 million brewery expansion that added brewing capacity, a state-of-the-art German bottling line and construction of a distillery that’s set to be up and running, well, “soon.”
And earlier this year, Indiana lawmakers passed and Gov. Mike Pence signed the so-called “Dark Lord Day” law that made the customary practice of beer “bottle-sharing” at Three Floyds' annual beer fest legal.
“Bottle-sharing has been done for forever [at Dark Lord Day], but the legality came into question in the last couple years, and now the state has signed off,” Three Floyds lawyer Jeff McKean said.
It wasn’t a hard sell.
“When I bring Nick down to the hearing to testify, he’s like a rock star to some legislators,” McKean said. “They really appreciate what he’s done, the jobs he’s created and national reputation and notoriety he brings to Indiana. It passed without objection.”
The law wasn’t passed solely for Three Floyds, but provisions in the legislation clearly limit bottle-sharing to craft beer festivals run by a brewery in operation for three years that draw more than 7,500 people, McKean said.
And right now, Dark Lord Day is the only Indiana beer fest that qualifies.
People planning to swap bottles with beer geek contemporaries should know you’re only allowed to bring 288 ounces of beer — that’s a case of 12-ounce bottles.
And, as McKean explained, “the intent is to allow people to bring craft beer, not a case of Miller Lite.”
If I know beer geeks, that shouldn’t be a problem.
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