Hospitality students at the University of South Carolina are learning how to brew, market and distribute their own beer. The college officially launched its own brand — Spur City Brewery — Wednesday, April 15,2025, with a celebration at Steel Hands Brewing in Cayce. The first beer released is an amber beer, which the students named the Garnet & Black Lot Lager. (Photo courtesy of USC)
COLUMBIA — Hospitality students at the University of South Carolina are learning how to brew, market and distribute their own beer.
The college officially launched its own brand — Spur City Brewery — Wednesday evening, with a celebration at Steel Hands Brewing in Cayce.
“Spur City was created by students,” said Olivia Mitchell, a senior hospitality management major. “Those students will share it with their classmates and family members. It brings a community because we decided to base the name on what we connect to: USC.”
The first brew released is an amber beer, which the students named the Garnet & Black Lot Lager.
“We think it’s a beer people will enjoy sipping while tailgating or just at home,” professor Scott Taylor said.
The beer launch was the culmination of three semesters of collaboration and hands-on learning, according to Taylor and chef instructor Robby Lybrand.
Last spring, Taylor started a competition in his beverage marketing and sales class, challenging the roughly 40 students to come up with a brand name, graphics and other marketing materials and pitch their ideas to a faculty panel.
Then, this past fall, the school’s inaugural craft beer production and sales class came up with the beer recipe.
The class, limited to students who are 21 years old or older, participated in every step of the brewing process, from milling the grain to putting it in the fermentation tanks at the school’s beverage education lab.
The class tried out half a dozen beer recipes over the course of the semester. The amber lager rose to the top.
“We had a couple that just didn’t work out,” Taylor said. “Luckily, one did and it worked out really well. We’re proud of it.”
There’s a science to the brewing, Taylor said. And from a sales perspective, the students learned about creating flavors that would appeal to a broad customer group.
“I love how we get to experiment and come up with new recipes,” Lybrand added. “We collaborate together with ideas of what type of beer everybody likes and then develop the grain bill and the hop profiles and things like that so that we come up with something unique.”
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Beyond just brewing, the students are taught about distribution and how laws governing alcohol vary across all 50 states.
For those considering a career in restaurant management, they learn about how to get access to the newest products and how to set proper menu prices, Taylor said.
The school is contracting with Steel Hands to brew, can and keg the Garnet & Black Lot Lager on a commercial basis. A portion of all sales of the beer at the Steel Hands tap room will go back to USC’s hospitality college for student scholarships.
“We’re hoping to have this beer distributed out to the public,” Taylor said. “Some local hotels, restaurants have already been saying they want it. We’re also going to see if we can get it into some of the bottle shops in town.”
In the future, Taylor hopes to do similar projects for wine and coffee, as well as beer.
The brewing class also is growing in popularity. The first class had four students, but Taylor expects more to enroll the next semester it’s offered. Eventually, Taylor and Lybrand hope to have about 20 students with multiple brew teams in each class.
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Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
