6th Annual Pig Roast

Since 2002, some friends of mine at Penn State have held a pig roast each September. It's such an awesome event that Tyler has an entire website dedicated to it. The past four roasts have been held at the Stimely cabin, tucked away in the heart of Rothrock State Forest. This year's roast was last weekend and while the turnout was a bit lower than usual, the food, fun, and beer was on par with (if not better than) years past.

Along with the requisite pig and roaster from the PSU Meat Labs, we acquired several kegs of good beer from local breweries: 1/6 barrel of East End Big Hop Harvest Ale, 1/2 barrel of Penn Oktoberfest, 1/2 barrel of Otto's Oktoberfest, and 1/2 barrel of Otto's Red Mo. Plus a 1/2 barrel of PBR to - inevitably - wash down our Sunday morning breakfast. I think this was by far the best selection of beer I'd seen in my 4 years of attending the roast. Both Oktoberfest brews were good, but my nod goes to the Otto's, which was a bit more flavorful.

I'm not sure exactly how many people we show up for these shindigs, but judging from the amount of beer consumed, we get a pretty good-sized crowd. Another indicator is the size of the beer pong tournament, which is always a lot of fun. 2005's pong tourney was one of the biggest and best ever, as seen in this video (click on "media keg").

Oh yeah, and the pig was especially good this year. Maybe it was the Scherba & Jamie signature homemade BBQ sauce, but I thought it was some of the best pork we've had in awhile. Next year we vow to get kaiser rolls, instead of the cheap hamburger rolls, since there is always room for improvement.

Only 359 days (don't forget, it's a leap year) 'til next year's roast...