From The Cellar: Three Floyds Dark Lord 2010

In Cellared Beer Reviews by Ryan

One of the other highlights of our visit to 4 Paws Brewing last month — beyond the tour, talking shop, drinking tank beer and splitting a five-year vertical of Stone Imperial Russian Stout — was drinking this beer. And I couldn’t be any less excited about it.

Weird, right?

I mean, it’s Dark Lord.

D-A-R-K.

L-O-R-D.

And it was good. Like, really good. It was chocolatey and velvety smooth and had some pleasant, soft notes of espresso and maybe a touch of peanut brittle. But I wanted more.

I wanted to see stars, and fireworks and maybe black out for a minute. I wanted to fall to my knees in tears because it was just so damn beautiful. I wanted to think I couldn’t drink another beer again because the rest would pale in comparison. I wanted earth, wind and fire. Thunder and lightning. Tango and Cash. I wanted my senses to all fail at once because they were overloaded. I wanted to simultaneously experience joy, pain and sadness.

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I experienced none of those things. But I drank a good beer. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless you’ve built up this ridiculous expectation of how a beer should taste: because there’s this Day and the people and the lines and variety’s and the bottle limits and the trades and the DARK LORD.

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Perhaps I set my expectations WAY too high. Or maybe I blew this beer out of proportion. Or maybe I let the hype overwhelm me. I guess when you take away the mystique all you have left is a good Russian Imperial Stout — and that’s okay in my book.

Besides, “Dark Lord: A Good Beer,” probably wouldn’t do much for sales.

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About the Author

Ryan

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Equal parts beer nerd and policy geek, Ryan is now the curator of the Guys Drinking Beer cellar. The skills he once used to dig through the annals of state government as a political reporter are now put to use offering unique takes on barrel-aged stouts, years-old barleywines and 10 + year verticals.

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