d-day!!!
DARKNESS DAY!
Basically a local brewery releases their “Darkness” beer once a year, just prior to Halloween at the brewery. Chris and I had been a little apprehensive about getting up early to go over and stand in line for a beer we had never tried since we were a little less than impressed with their other beers in cans. I am however thrilled that we actually went. We were 48 people away from not being guaranteed our 6 bottles of the beer, we had cut it THAT close. People had apparently camped outside the brewery since about 6:30p LAST night for this stuff. We literally almost walked RIGHT by the wristbands that would get us our Darkness as I thought they were closer to the gates, luckily our hero Joe the volunteer stopped us and gave us our pumpkin-decorated orange band with a specific number on it (this becomes important later.)
We wandered the brewery grounds, checked out people and hung for a bit with the people that we had bonded with over the previous hour and a half in line as we bought beer tokens and tried their beers on tap for the first time. We were definitely more impressed with their offerings from the tap vs. cans. Beers I had sworn I’d never drink again I was actually enjoying (and no I wasn’t too drunk to care) I did get to taste Surly Smoke 2008 which was a really awesome and smooth beer. We got some merch from the brewery and from the Darkness release (stickers, glasses, poster, t-shirt and a surly brewers coat for me!) and then grabbed a bite to eat before reconnecting with some of our line-mates and got another beer on them for free! WOO!
After that we decided since we have another concert to get to tonight, we’d go grab our bottles of Darkness and make our way back to the car. We stopped by the merch table first to grab a limited edition poster (#30/500!) and talked to a few of the merch volunteers. They said something to guy walking by who was wearing a brewer’s coat and then mentioned to us that he WON it because of the number on his Darkness wristband. Chris and I were excited and feeling lucky and even MORE excited when the mention of potential bottles of Darkness 2007 were being given away. So we made our way over to the table to get our bottles and I was wearing my shirt from the show last night and one of the guys was like “TFK! Awesome!” so it was like an omen. The guy cut my band off and asked how many bottles I wanted, I told him “6 and I’d like to win the coat or a bottle of 2007 Darkness too please!” All with a smile of course. He told us that only the first 4 people in line got the ‘07 bottles and then he looked at his sheet and said blah-blah-52, if you had been 53 you’d be a winner. And I laughed and pulled Chris over and showed him his band, which of course was #XXX53! Chris won a cool Surly Brewing hat for the winter!
So we were amped as we walked away with our case of beer (these are GIANT 750ml bottles btw) and all our gear, half of it we had previously dumped back at the car before lunch as to not have to carry it all day.
The day was STUNNING out, sunny, cloudless and about 63 with a bit of a breeze. Couldn’t have asked for better really. It’s only gonna get better tonight at the Building 429 show that I’ll have to write about later.
Tags: beer, darkness, darkness day, surly brewing co.
