It's getting very dark

If you've been keeping up with MnBeer.com lately, then you know that Surly Brewing put up for sale a limited number of 750 ml bottles of their imperial stout Darkness this past weekend. Simple enough, right? Wrong. The first people to show up at the brewery on Saturday morning were some crazies from Iowa, setting up camp around a fire pit at around 2am.

Ok, truth-in-advertising here: I was crazy enough to arrive at 8am and stand around in the cold for an hour before Omar and crew opened the doors. But 2am?

I'm not that surprised, really. Darkness has swept the beer community, which will go to extreme lengths for hard-to-find beers. Surly had only 480 bottles to sell, allowing two per person. With no one really knowing what would happen--all we knew is that sales were to start at 2pm --our originally-planned arrival time was 10am, but it kept getting earlier and earlier as the hype kept increasing. I was lucky I suppose to get my two bottles, but tickets didn't sell out until 12:30pm on Saturday. Still, it was a good time and Surly took care of it's loyal fans with free samples all day, live music, and an inviting atmosphere.

My friend, neighbor and fellow homebrewer Don shot some video of the day. Check out his results below.