Penguin City Beer Coming to Stambaugh Stadium
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — When the Youngstown State University Penguins football team kicks off the 2019 season, fans can enjoy a Penguin City Beer while cheering on the team.
Penguin City Beer announced Friday it will be the first locally brewed beer to be sold at Stambaugh Stadium on YSU campus. It will also be sold at Beeghly Center during YSU men’s and women’s basketball games.
“This is a really exciting time for us,” Aspasia Lyras, co-owner of Penguin City Brewing Co., said in a release. “We have worked so hard to get to where we are and this milestone shows how much Youngstown and the whole Mahoning Valley has accepted our beer and our company. We can’t thank them enough for all the support.”
Penguin City will be sold in limited edition cans featuring a unique label design as tribute to YSU football. The tribute label will only be available during the 2019 YSU football season, and is the second such label designed by the brewery. Earlier in May, Penguin City rolled out its first limited-run tribute label for the Simply Slavic festival.
The announcement highlights a change for the company, which will shift to canning its flagship ale in August. Penguin City may still do bottles for some releases, but will mostly be canning from this point forward, Lyras said. Canning is a simpler process than bottling, requires less materials and creates less waste, she said.
“We knew we wanted to move to cans eventually,” co-owner Richard Bernacki said in a release. “And the partnership with YSU Athletics expedited the whole process.”
The partnership with YSU started in 2018 when Lyras contacted the university about tailgating during games. She spoke with Rick Love, associate director of athletics, who helped Penguin City set up tasting events during tailgates and got the beer into the executive loges at Stambaugh Stadium. The response was immediately positive, she said.
“They really loved it. It caught on quick and people just embraced it,” she said. “They wanted bottles straight away for the loges.”
That kicked off the company’s bottling operation. From that point, the relationship between Penguin City and YSU grew and the company is now an official partner of YSU Athletics, Love said.
“The Youngstown State University Department of Athletics is very happy to expand the partnership with our friends at Penguin City Beer,” Love said. “Penguin City Beer has certainly made their mark in the Mahoning Valley over the past year and we are excited to have them aboard as an Official Partner of YSU Athletics and to enhance our fan experience at games with their incredible local product, which will be brewed in the shadow of the stadium.”
On May 17, Penguin City began brewing operations at the B&O Station downtown. Since the company began, the beer had been brewed at Paladin Brewing in Austintown.
Pictured above: Richard Bernacki and Aspasia Lyras (right), co-owners of Penguin City Brewing Co., with Michael Pontikos, the company’s marketing representative, and Pete the Penguin.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
