The hints are over. The time is now and apparently the time is ripe for beery poetry as not only am I announcing the Good Beer Blog Spring 2008 Beer Poetry Contest - our seventh contest in an unending series - right here and right now...but then I received an email from Evan Rail saying that his blog over at the Prague Monitor is running its own beer poetry contest, too, with a wide range of Czech beer prizes including a copy of his book. Look at those prizes. Jeesh. It's a regular beerapalooza poetica.

Am I worried? Me? Am I threatened by the prospect of all the good haiku heading to Europe? No way. While I may have no book to give, I do have twelve tickets to TAP NY 2008 where, you know, you get free beer, great food and can hang out with beer people for a weekend - just look at all the breweries who are heading to hang out with you, the lucky prize winners. Each ticket allows one person in for one day so I am giving away four tickets so three couples and/or drinking buddies can take in the two day even set for 26 and 27 April 2008 at the Hunter Mountain Resort in the Catskills in upper downstate New York. That is a 98 buck value prize per person who will get to go. Making this package worth...six times 98 bucks!

And seeing that this limits the contest to mid-Atlantic USA folk, I am also going to throw in another few prizes for others that, err, I have to have a look for in the world famous Good Beer Blog Barrel o' Prizes. What do you mean you don't believe there is a barrel! Damn right, there is. It's a hell of a barrel...and it's full of prizes. Chock full. O' prizes. Just so you can get started tonight, here are the rules for our contest:

• You may submit any poem on the subject of beer as long as you wrote it. No format or minimum length.
I will judge them - extra points for the best use of the letters "j" and "q".
The winners get prizes.

So let's be having you. By 10:00 pm, Monday March 31st, 2008 I plan to have about 587 entries and will announce the winners within four days - a mere 96 hours, from that point in time. That gives you...err...well, this ain't a math contest...you get the idea.