Located in Hardwick, New Jersey, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco played the role of Camp Crystal Lake for the original Friday the 13th, and it’s an active Boy Scouts camp to this day. In other words, that means horror fans don’t typically have access to the campgrounds, *except* for on select special occasions when the premises are opened up for Friday the 13th tours.
This past September, Roger Krzeminski was one of the lucky fans selected by lottery to spend the day at the real-life Camp Crystal Lake, and he used the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something pretty incredible. As Roger explained to us, “I asked at camp if I could take a few gallons of Crystal Lake water to make beer since I’m an avid homebrewer.”
“I figured how cool would it be to make beer……from actual Crystal Lake water!?”
Roger got the okay and indeed took a few gallons of genuine Crystal Lake water home, which he filtered and sanitized to make his Camp Crystal Lake American Red Ale!
The home-brewing horror fan detailed the process to us, “A standard batch of beer is 5 gallons which gives you 54 beers. I use 7 gallons because there is a considerable amount of evaporation when you boil the wort (beer juice if you will) for 1 hour. I came out with 52 bottles as I did lose a little additional volume in the filter/sanitize process.”
Roger continued, “These are purely for personal consumption and gifts for friends/family. I’m not selling these or anything of that sort. If I am fortunate enough to be invited back to camp by the generous folks at Crystal Lake Tours (CLT), I would be thrilled to get the opportunity to make more. At the end of the day, this project of mine would have never left the ground if it weren’t for the generosity and goodwill of the people at CLT. If anything were to come of this, I’d truly love for the outcome to be more people directed to the website and buy souvenirs, tour tickets or merchandise to support the camp and to keep “Camp Crystal Lake” thriving so future fans and scouts can still see this place and enjoy the experiences as much as I really have.”
Check out some images of Roger’s “Camp Crystal Lake” ale below!
