2015 Shakesbeer Festival Contest Winners Announced!

We name not one but TWO winners in our annual Shakesbeer Festival rhyming couplet contest

The Hudson Valley Shakesbeer Festival returns to Poughkeepsie on April 19 (read more about it here), and we couldn’t be more excited: Where else can one catch a live performance of Macbeth AND sip some of the region’s tastiest craft brews? So we asked our readers to sharpen their quill pens and send us their best rhyming couplets — bonus points for those written iambic pentameter — declaring their love for local beer and the Bard for a chance to win a pair of passes to the Shakesbeer Festival. 

Of course, we couldn’t choose just one. Congratulations to our two Shakesbeer Contest winners and honorable mentions, below:

sean contest winner erin shakesbeer contest

Our 2015 Shakesbeer Contest winners: Sean (left) and Erin (right, with family)

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2015 Shakesbeer Winners:

Sean D., New Paltz:

Please my lady, let me drinketh at least one more beer,
For I am not quite drunk yet and you look like a steer!

Erin O., Yorktown Heights:

What liquid gold through yonder taps flows to my tongue?
It is the yeast, with hops and malt, the best bar(d) none.


Related: Hudson Valley Shakesbeer Festival Returns!


Honorable Mentions:

Bill S., New Paltz:

Stout, damned hops! I commend thee, noble brewer,
For never was a grain fermented truer.

Charlie D., Middle Village, Queens:

But if the while I think on thee, dear beer,
All losses end and sorrows disappear.

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Gene O., Yorktown Heights:

Bard is Bitter English, buys into Newburgh Conspiracy,
Dreams of witches, ghosts and murder, and writes brilliant lunacy.

Karen K., Orangeburg:

I shared a Hudson Valley brew with my friend Bill a time or two,
And toasted we with foamy breath to the success of HVSF’s MacBeth!

Michael F., Lagrangeville:

As brews doth goest, please maketh mine a honey,
Here’s hoping I winneth ye contest fore I haven’t any money!

Nicole O., Hewitt, New Jersey:

UFO is the one she’s the one,
She has me at hello, oh hello.

Patricia R., Poughkeepsie:

Ye men be warned, many a lady will profess her love of stout to you,
Alas, she means not you, but her beloved brew.

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Rich E., New Paltz:

Shakespeare’s tragedy that is King Lear,
Is as dark as a porter, a lovely robust beer.

Sari G., Saugerties:

No taming of the brew here, unfeathered and untarred,
We raise our frosty mugs — no holds Bard!


For information and tickets to this weekend’s Hudson Valley Shakesbeer Festival, click here.

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