USC launches student-made Spur City Brewery with Garnet & Black Lager

USC’s Spur City Brewery made the leap from class project to real taproom beer at Steel Hands Brewing in Cayce, with Garnet & Black Lot Lager as the first release in the student-built lineup. The amber lager was brewed from a recipe developed by students in a program built to move beyond the classroom and into production.

The brand started in the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management’s Beverage Marketing and Sales class, where students competed on brand name, graphics and market positioning before Spur City was selected. From there, the project moved into the Craft Beer Production and Sales class, where students built, refined and prepared the first recipe for market.

That path turned the beer into more than a class exercise. Faculty members Scott Taylor Jr. and Robby Lybrand helped guide the project alongside the USC Alumni Association and Steel Hands Brewing, which provided the production partnership needed to scale the beer beyond a classroom prototype. The result was a working example of how a student concept can move from branding boards and recipe drafts to a finished beer ready for a public launch.

The mechanics matter here. Students were not just asked to think about beer in theory, but to work through the same steps that define a real brewery release: recipe development, branding, sales planning and market positioning. Garnet & Black Lot Lager became the proof of concept, showing how a student team can shape both the liquid in the glass and the story around it.

For the craft beer world, the project points to a different kind of talent pipeline, one that blends hospitality training, beverage marketing and hands-on brewing in a single workflow. It also gives students something concrete to show for the work: a beer tied to USC identity, built with campus and industry partners, and headed for taps and cans soon after launch. In a field where entry-level experience often arrives in fragments, Spur City Brewery offered a more complete rehearsal for the business of beer.