I’ve said this many times, but one of the coolest aspects of the STL Hops community is the fact that it really is a community. People are not only familiar with each other, but they help each other, tease each other, and many of them are now friends. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of.

The vibe at Dark Lord Day at Three Floyds Brewing is not too dissimilar to the vibe at STL Hops events. For the most part, there are really nice people all wanting to share some beer. This year especially, was a lot of fun. In fact, there was a large contingent of people from STL Hops at DLD.

One of those people who got to attend was Dan Bostlemann (dbsdelight). Originally, Dan didn’t have one of the magic tickets to get into DLD, but thanks to the generosity of people from STL Hops, Dan was able to find a ticket and make this his fifth Dark Lord Day in a row.

To repay back the generous nature of the STL Hops community, Dan is offering up a bottle of 2008 and 2010 Dark Lord for a couple of people to win. The 2008 and 2010 bottles felt a bit lonely, so I’ve added a 2009 and 2011 to go along for the ride.

But, as you can tell from the title, this is no ordinary contest. Rather than just give these bottles away to a random winner, I’ve decided that you’ve got to work for it. This is a haiku contest.

I want you to write your best haiku about Dark Lord or Dark Lord Day. I’ll pick four winners to each get one year out of this vertical (one winner, one bottle.) As this will probably be a very popular contest you must exactly follow all of the rules that follow:

If you’ve won something from STL Hops in the past 6 months, please be cool and let someone else enter.

Your haiku must be 5/7/5. I’ll be counting.

No multiple entries and only one haiku per entry. So make that haiku count.

The best haiku will be at my discretion.

You must be 21 or older to enter.

You must be able to arrange someone to pick up your bottle, I will not be shipping these.

Email your haiku to contest@stlhops.com with the subject of Dark Lord Haiku, I’ll be choosing the winner and posting the best entries next Thursday, June 2nd at 3PM CDT. Good luck.