Kicking around downtown Bangor this past Saturday, I started to pass by a little “pocket park” next to Central Street Farmhouse on Central Street. Tucked into this little strip of garden and land between the two buildings a surprising number of men wearing Baby Bjorns standing around kegs and grills, surrounded by home brewing equipment and accessories.

I was just kind of gawking about for a moment. Was this a private backyard barbeque? A block party?

“Come on in,” said one friendly guy. “Have a home brew.”

Like you have to ask me twice. Little did I know I’d just stumbled upon a “Big Brew” event for National Homebrew Day, open to the public to encourage people to appreciate the joys and ease of home brewing.

Zeth Lundy was one such Baby Bjorn wearer (complete with baby). As I started talking to him, it all made sense. He and his wife operate Central Street Farmhouse, the three-story building next door and owned this little grassy area. Their business just made Dispatch Magazine’s Best of Bangor list. It’s an urban homesteading supplies and education business that offers supplies and support for homebrewing, cheesemaking, cloth diapering, and natural parenting.

Lundy was hosting the event with a half dozen local homebrewers in tow, celebrating on a micro scale what people all around the world were doing this very day to commemorate National Homebrew Day on the first Saturday in May.

I’d not heard a word about this event in Midcoast, despite the fact that we have a big home-brewing community, as well as local homebrew supplies at Red Witch Brewing Supply in Rockport and the Belfast Co-op. Red Witch has made an announcement that they’re up for sale so I turned to Zafra Whitcomb, a homebrewer and Belfast Co-op employee I’d interviewed last year. In 2012, he beat more than 100 beer enthusiasts in the Maine Homebrewers Competition, a statewide contest run out of Bangor and last year we’d done a story on him titled: Looks like we have a ‘Winnah’!  For this year’s competition, he didn’t win, but came close with not just one, but two brews in the finalist category. (For those nerd out on specialty brew flavors, they were a Polish Grodziskie, a low-alcohol, smoked wheat beer and a Dusseldorf Alt, which is kind of a German ESB.)

Whitcomb, who does workshops on home brewing, says Belfast Co-op has kits he sometimes uses when teaching groups how easy it is to brew at home.

“You don’t need a lot of equipment,” he said. “As long as you have a reasonably decent soup pot, you can start with that. A small investment in a couple of buckets and an air lock is all you really need. Everything else is just sort of an enhancement. But you can start off very inexpensively and make a beer that you like.”

Whitcomb personally patronizes Richmond Home Brew Supply (Richmond), Central Street Farmhouse (Bangor) and Maine Brewing Supply (Portland).

“These places I recommend highly because they’ve got the most experienced people working for them,” he said. “For people just starting out in homebrewing, it can be intimidating and it’s good to have clear directions and be relaxed about how simple it can be. If you want to explore new techniques and new directions, it’s really helpful to have someone who you can talk to in person, who has the ingredients right there.”

For more information about National Homebrewing Day and other related events visit their website homebrewersassociation.org.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com