If you’re most people, Friday is … well … Friday.

If you’re a fan of craft beer and you live in the Pittsburgh region, it’s Christmas, the Fourth of July and your birthday, wrapped up as one. Because it’s the start of Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week.

The nine-day event, which begins Friday morning with a beer breakfast in an East Carson Street establishment, promises to be a dizzying tour of the best of what beer has to offer from the region’s breweries and those around the country and around the world.

From Friday through April 28, there will be beer dinners, beer tastings, beer competitions and beer education. The events will range from beer and food pairings at fancy downtown establishments to information tasting sessions at local distributorships.

And they will all showcase the one segment of the beer industry that’s growing; craft brewing sales were up 11 percent by volume in 2010, while beer sales overall dropped by 1 percent in the same year, according to the Brewers Association.

“We’re all part of an industry that’s about quality, independence and passion, and people who attend Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week events will see it and taste it,” said Andy Rich, brewmaster at Penn Brewery in Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill neighborhood and chairman of the Pittsburgh Craft Beer Alliance, the group that has organized the week.

This week’s events are the culmination of a year’s worth of volunteer work. At the outset — an informal meeting of local industry people organized by Rich — the mission wasn’t even about organizing a local event; it was to try to coordinate local observations of American Craft Beer Week. But Rich said those discussions turned from the national event to something along the lines of “Why can’t we do this here?”

“We started a little slowly at first, but some people who had ideas about how we should be organized came on board, and it sort of took off,” Rich said. “The number of people we’ve had helping out — and the time and energy they’ve spent — has really been amazing.”

Part of the work at first was setting a foundation to drive the event. That was accomplished several months ago, with the creation of the alliance, a nonprofit group that includes many of the region’s beer professionals — brewers, bar owners, distributors — and others who support the industry.

The group isn’t exclusive to Pittsburgh. Rich said after some initial troubles getting the word out — “It was all word of mouth in the beginning, but we wanted everyone to be involved,” he said — members of the alliance started hearing from supporters from around the region.

“This is something that will be good for the entire region,” said Conway resident Colleen Leary, an alliance board member. “We have Beaver County people involved in the organization, and we have events all over the region.”

Rich said that initial work, now that it’s done, will help streamline the organization of the event in the future.

“We have the nonprofit set up, we have bylaws,” he said. “Much of the work we did in the last year was to create a platform for next year.”

Once work began on the event itself, the response was stunning. Events organizer Mindy Heisler set a goal for the group: to find 100 to 150 events for the week.

“I thought that would be a pretty good start,” Heisler said on Tuesday. “We’re at something like 375 events now, and more keep showing up. I really wasn’t expecting the kind of enthusiasm we’ve been seeing.”

And as was the case with the group’s organization, the events won’t be limited to the Pittsburgh city limits.

“There are events in Greensburg, in Cranberry, Uniontown, all over the South Hills,” Heisler said. “We got a much bigger base than I was expecting.”

That list will include events at bars and restaurants from Robinson Township to Sewickley to Fallston — and about a dozen places in between. The Bocktown Beer and Grill in the Beaver Valley Mall will host one of the week’s more unique events at 7 p.m. Monday — “Gender Studies 423: Women and Craft Beer” will focus on women, but would serve as a good introductory class for anyone who is still learning about craft beer.

“You’ll have six samples and we’ll do a blind tasting,” said Angela Maffessanti, a founder of Pittsburgh Beer Ladies, who will run the session with Bocktown owner Chris Dilla, Vecenie Distributing rep Amanda Bowen and homebrewer Marta Napoleone. “We’ll give everyone a chance to talk a little bit about what they’re tasting, and then we’ll have some guidelines that cover the different styles and what to expect from each one.”

The session is open to anyone — it costs $25, with proceeds benefiting Operation Walk Pittsburgh — but Maffessanti said the focus on women is important.

“Beer has traditionally been marketed to men, and even as it grows, the craft beer side of the industry can seem a little inaccessible,” said Maffessanti, whose own group has grown to include 160 members in less than a year. “We want to open that door, so everyone can taste and enjoy what we taste and enjoy.”

Educating the public — especially those who have hesitated to stray from their mass-produced beers — is one goal of the alliance. Another is highlighting the quality of the local industry.

“Pittsburghers are used to making things — that’s what our entire history is built on,” said Scott Smith, owner of the city’s East End Brewing. “Pittsburgh still makes something, and the beer we make here we can call our own.”