How do you remain unpretentious when you brew an imperial Russian-style stout and sell it in four-packs of 22-ounce bombers for $60 in severely limited quantities only to people willing to travel to your brewery once a year (and single bottles of which can resell on eBay for three figures)? How do you remain humble and accessible when amateur drinkers and professional reviewers alike consistently rate your beers as the best in the world?
The Three Floyds brewery seems to have a few ideas about it.
Located about an hour’s drive southeast of Chicago in the unassuming town of Munster, Indiana, the small craft brewery recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. Fifteen years may not seem like a particularly tenured position in the world of beer. After all, monks were brewing ales in the cellars of their cathedrals in the sixteenth century, and American brewing establishments, some of whom are still in existence, date back well before George Washington ever took an axe to a cherry tree. But in the booming modern small-batch beer community, fifteen years puts Three Floyds squarely as among the grandfathers of the movement.
So, as is wont for many a teenager on a rite of passage, they threw a party. They invited all their metal band friends to come and play, all their booze-food peddling buddies to sling greasy grub, and a ton of their brewing collaborators and competitors to pour their wares for literally thousands of guests who descended in droves upon the unsuspecting office park where the brewery is located.
This, truly, is the way a beer festival should go down. The attendance was a melting pot of beer junkies from literally around the nation, back-packing their home-brewed bottles and local craft ales into the event to share and trade with friends, both new and old.
Three Floyds has made their mark, predominately based upon the fact that they are uncompromisingly committed to these fans. Large banners hung on either side of the stage 
(which is more accustomed to housing the vats, tubes, barrels, and bearded brewers than it is to melting faces with hard rock and metal – the headliners at the party were the Melvins, sound-wall quintet featuring a pounding double-drum set) read in Latin and English “Better to Break than Bend.” This testament to quality and idealism in a largely watered down market is accented by a rendering of the Dark Lord storming through a pile of crushed skulls. To bring it all home, in fact, for one of their Imperial Pale Ales, the Arctic Panzer Wolf, the only description provided by the brewery reads as follows: “A massive IPA that will leave your palate its hapless victim. Scorched earth is our brewery policy.”
This destruction-as-creation ideology and multi-faceted iconography runs rampant throughout their product line: collaboration with artists in the comic industry is but one of their many partnerships. Their imagery and descriptors range from the demonic, whimsical, historic, and fantastical. They have brewed collaborative beers with other brewers, and frequently use other local fare in their beers (which, truth be told, is what brought me there on the unseasonably warm day in November this fall, and also to the Dark Lord release in the spring and a vertical tasting of the stout held in Chicago a bit earlier in the year).
Aside from beer, my other true liquid passion is coffee. The Dark Lord is brewed with Mexican vanilla, Indian sugar, and Chicago’s (and now LA’s) Intelligentsia Coffee. The coffee is Intelligentsia’s own bombastic answer to espresso culture, the aptly named Black Cat Espresso (a nod to the firecracker, of course).
While Intelligentsia served both drip and espresso coffee at the event, as they have for Three Floyds’ events past, this particular scenario differed somewhat. While the idea of a coffee stout is hardly an original one (though that being said, the Dark Lord is something of an exception – but I’ll get to that in a moment), brewing coffee and beer together is a realm that surely even the most twisted drinker would fear to tread.
The Dark Lord itself is not for the faint of heart. The Floyds won’t tell you the alcohol percentage, but a reasonable guess would put it in excess of 10%. Brewed with sugar and vanilla, it will only get stronger as it ages, as well. The description on the side of the bottle pretty much says it all: “Dark Lord is a gargantuan Russian Style Imperial Stout, with a reverse cascading head that starts out billowing the color of burnt oil like the Dark Lord rising from the black primordial beginnings. Its Resonant vinous aroma has been described as cherries, sweet malt, molasses, burnt currants, plums with a port wine alcohol undertow. Mochachino notes buried within. Motor oil consistency, hellishly smooth yet divinely burnt and vinous. The first sip coats your palate with a palatial charred fruit and chocolate blanket. Alcohol burn wiggles its way down your throat with a thick body.”
But the eccentric and, perhaps, ingenious minds at the brewery and roasterie collided and concocted two distinct, uncharacteristic, and blindingly delicious beverages. In a kind-of mind-bending twist of mixology, Black Cat was extracted into the Dark Lord (which already has a healthy dose of the stuff). This simple, but extraordinarily sweet, caffeinated, and boozy combination was dubbed the “Black Abyss.” Topped with a few ounces of steamed Kilgus non-homogenized whole milk, it became a “White Devil” (referred to on occasion jokingly as a “Strom Thurmond”) a silky smooth and heady beverage, full of foam and deceptively venomous (read: intoxicating).
After all the spilled beer was cleared away, all the coffee hoppers had been emptied, all the kegs had been tapped, all the food trucks drove into the sunset, and all the too-drunk-to-function attendees stumbled off towards their hotel rooms, there was only one thing I wanted: more Zombie Dust.
So my colleagues and I walked away with a case.
This beer is the perfect example, in my mind, of the brewery’s marriage of eccentricity, quality, and accessibility. Recently added to their already crushingly fantastic lineup of year-round brews, the smooth, citric, piney, and just-sweet enough beer is described as an “intensely hopped and gushing undead pale ale” that will be the drinker’s “only respite after the zombie apocalypse.” This beer retails in the same price range as any other craft brew six-pack and can be found at local watering holes (at least near Chicago) for the standard $4-5 pint. But I would stack this beer against any pale ale I’ve ever tried, including Bear Republic’s Racer Five, Russian River’s popular and pricey Pliney the Elder, and even Alpine’s Nelson (a single New Zealand varietal dry-hopped beer that will set you back at least $20 for a 22-ounce bottle).
I can’t say enough about the maniacal-genius minds and hands that make Three Floyds’ beer what it is. Without fear they push boundaries, create unlikely and fruitful partnerships, make a buck or two in the process, and never seem to forget that drinking beer is a little bit about science, a little bit about art, and a little bit about just having a laugh and putting something delicious (and maybe a little revolutionary) in your face.
Photos by: Chris Kornman & 3Floyds
