As I've said a few times, today was National Homebrew day, where brewers the country over get together, have a good time, drink heavily and make some beer :) the 6th installment of the Youngstown "Pump House Brew Crew" branch of this nationwide celebration was a blast.

The festivities officially started this morning at 7am when Mr. O (my personal brew sensei) scared away a bum that was sleeping on the tables outside the B&O restraunt that was our host this year. I showed up at 10AM and jumped right in, starting off a 5 Gal. shared batch of Blind Faith, a nice little IPA that we had chosen to brew for the event. Mr. O started up a 10 Gal. batch of Rye beer. By noon, my partners in crime and a good number of others had shown up and things were in full swing. As usual, Ken had the first boil-over of the day, and followed it up with some burnt malt and a second boil-over (I boiled mine over at least once, so it's OK ;) ).

A plethora of food was on hand this year, and even more beer to wash it down, the highlights being a nice clean Helles, Mr. O's mud red ale and pilsner, Spud's Oatmeal stout, some 24 Yr. old mead, and a dortmunder. About mid afternoon, Neal decided to give brewing a try and got broken in with an Irish Stout kit we had on hand, and as a testement to how easy it is to brew, I'm confident that it will turn out excellent despite the mysterious bag of ingredient that showed up after we had already locked it away in a fermenter ;)

As of 6:00Pm, the total for the day was 285 Gallons of beer brewed on site for the occasion, but with some extra fermenters and hardware turning up, and some people willing to keep brewing I'm positive the total is going to break 300 Gallons this year! The draw to the festivities this year were pronounced, as people started to pull in off of the street to find out what was going on (everyone that pulled in stayed a while :D must have been the 20 or so kegs of free homebrew we brought) I am also positive that sunburn hurts ;)