MUNSTER — Raj Shah’s story became more fantastic as the wait for the shuttle dragged on.
By the end, the first-time attendee had taken his bottle of vanilla Dark Lord, smashed it to the ground and screamed “I AM DARK LORD!” at the cowering server Saturday afternoon during craft brewer 3 Floyds’ premiere event. What really happened wasn’t quite so amusing, however.
“I found out I got the Golden Ticket, so I went to purchase my bottle of vanilla Dark Lord,” Shah, of Chicago, said. “I just bought it when someone knocked it out of my hands. The (salesperson) said he couldn’t give me another, so I asked to see the manager.
“The manager said that while I was being cool, he couldn’t replace the bottle because he didn’t see that the event occurred.”
Shah, along with his shuttle mates — Chad and Dustin Mozanowski, Elliott Sowards, Sean Sullivan and Robin Giacolo — were over the whole affair. Arriving around the time the doors opened, the rain and cold wore on the group by afternoon.
Then the shuttle that brought them to the Holy Land of Hops was nowhere to be found.
“Has anyone called the company? Because I bet they’ll say, ‘Oh! That bus left 20 minutes ago (Get going! People are calling us!)'” Sowards said.
Still, Dark Lord Day, the mother of all beer fests, remains the favored event for beer dorks to gather and talk, drink and live their favorite beverage. Waterlogged though they were, their discomfort didn’t prevent them from breaking open a special brew: Black Tuesday, a 20 percent ABV stout from southern California brewery The Bruery.
Giacolo made out like a bandit as well, showing off her Bruery get, Chocolate Rain.
“I saw on the Dark Lord Facebook page that this guy was bringing Chocolate Rain,” she said. “I commented that I would love to have some, so he private messaged me. I paid for it, but it was a fair price.”
“With the variants of other breweries, there’s not a lot of opportunity to get some of this,” Sowards said. “I got to try Off-Color’s Fierce, which isn’t available anywhere else in the world.”
Plus the camaraderie can’t be beat.
“None of us knew each other before today,” Chad Mozanowski said. “Good way to spend my birthday.”
A sizeable portion of 3 Floyds’ Dark Lord proceeds will benefit the Humane Society Calumet Area.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance writer
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