Wisconsin will probably never have its own Dark Lord Day, but that’s fine.
Three Floyds Brewing Company holds a ticketed release party, “Dark Lord Day,” for its massive adjunct stout, Dark Lord, every year around this time. The 2016 bacchanal took place April 30 at the Three Floyds brewery in Munster, Ind. While the weather was perhaps even worse than last year, the increased availability of the rare Dark Lord variant bottles seemed to keep a partial lid on post-event internet complaints.
The Dark Lord Day event is part of a class of bottle release events held by brewers across the country: Cigar City’s Hunahpu’s Day, Surly’s Darkness Day, Russian River’s Pliny the Younger release, Perennial’s Abraxas Day and Central Waters’ anniversary stout party. These are big beers and big productions. Frequently, the beers released at these events aren't otherwise available for retail. And they are priced at a markup.
Enthusiasm is good, but things can get out of hand at these events. On Hunahpu’s Day 2014, forged tickets resulted in a drastic shortfall of the Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout available for legitimate ticket holders, and the crowd got angry. It’s actually kind of scary.
Bottle release events are becoming a way brewers generate publicity in an increasingly crowded market. The dates on which tickets go on sale are turning into holidays on the beer calendar, with hopeful fans wearing out their F5 keys trying to get to the front of the line on ticketing sites like Eventbrite and Brown Paper Tickets. There’s no shortage of social media humblebragging over a successful ticket acquisition, and this has become true for Wisconsin releases as well as the big ones nationally.
Tickets for Central Waters’ “Eighteen” bottle release in January, which included an allocation to purchase up to eight bottles per ticket, sold out online in minutes. Funk Factory and O’so Brewing released White Lodge Reserve and Frampaars — two of a number of sour beers from their wildly successful ongoing collaboration — as a pre-sale on Brown Paper Tickets. People paid full price in advance, with a per-person limit of six bottles of each beer, and 1,900 bottles sold out in 90 seconds.
Even the smaller brewers are getting into it. Vintage Brewing-Whitney Way held the first of two Madison Craft Beer Week “Bomber Bombardment” releases on Sunday, with limited releases of two beers: Apple Brandy Barrel-Aged Dedication and Mileston (an English barleywine from 2014). Normally, Vintage doesn’t bottle its beers at all, so this is a good opportunity to get into obtaining rarer beer releases, with a lower barrier to entry. The second bombardment will happen this Saturday, May 7.
Following its successful release last year, Next Door’s Mutha Pucka will be bottled for a second year and, in a cheeky move, sold at the Atwood Street brewpub on Mother’s Day. This pineapple sour blonde, made with the kettle-souring method that’s growing in popularity nationally, will have a four-bottle-per-person limit.
Central Waters recently held a lottery for a new, ultra-rare barrel-aged stout called Ardea Insignis. It was a 1,000-bottle count release at $40 per bottle (and a limit of two per person). The brewery was inundated with lottery entries.
It’s much easier and less expensive to go to one of Central Waters anniversary parties. The vibe is chill and friendly. You can have a good time at an event like Dark Lord Day, too, but people get crabbier about the beer, about the cost, about the crowd. For whatever reason, a Wisconsin bottle release just doesn’t have the same level of aggro. I’m cool with that.
