Recon Brewing’s specialty ale to help BC3 fight food insecurity
Cheers, Pioneers. Frontier Beer. Pioneer Beer. And, as a tribute to the former Oak Hills Golf Course upon which Butler County Community College has been educating students for nearly 60 years, Oakey-Doke.
Each year, Recon Brewing creates a specialty beer to promote and support the work of two nonprofit organizations, and the BC3 Education Foundation is a 2024 beneficiary.
A number of BC3 employees in the past month have bandied about names for the hazy pale ale whose proceeds will assist the college’s Pioneer Pantry through the BC3 Education Foundation.
BC3 employees Mikayla Moretti, Jayme Steighner and Torey O’Donnell are members of the college’s food security team who help coordinate the Pioneer Pantry.
“The creative process for the name was a lot of fun,” said Moretti, of BC3’s Education Foundation. “We tossed around a bunch of different ideas.”
Moretti, Steighner, O’Donnell and other BC3 employees began pondering names after watching Recon Brewing owner Nathan Bacher and workers Evan Flannery and Jack Laughner begin the beer-making process by climbing three steps to a platform and to shake a measurement of hops into a boiling 300-gallon kettle.
“We were talking about something like Pioneer Pantry Pale Ale, making it a tongue-twister,” said Steighner, of BC3’s Keystone Education Yields Success program.
“After hearing all the ideas, we tried to pick the one that best fit,” said O’Donnell, associate director of student life for student activities. “That was interesting and challenging all at the same time.”
Ultimately, the Recon Brewing batch has been dubbed Graduate Pale Ale — G.P.A. for short.
Recon Brewing crafted nearly 13 kegs of the blend. Graduate Pale Ale is available at the brewery’s Butler location, and will be sold starting Tuesday at its Bridgeville and Cranberry Township locations.
Fifteen percent of sales of Graduate Pale Ale drafts will be allocated to Pioneer Pantry. The two nonprofit organizations for which Recon Brewing blends a specialty beer each year are called karma tap recipients.
“We’ve done the karma tap since we opened,” Bacher said. “We try to put out good karma into the world so maybe good karma comes back to us.”
The debut of Pioneer Pantry five years ago followed a 2018 survey of 304 students which found 38% of respondents experienced low or very low food security.
The pantry served 341 individuals in 2019-20 and assisted more than 900 in 2023-24. It is expected to help more than 1,000 this academic year, Moretti said.
Pioneer Pantry provides canned, boxed and bagged foods, fresh vegetables, dairy products, frozen meats, products to seal and preserve food, and hygiene items for infants, Moretti said.
Grab-and-go stations at BC3’s additional locations in Armstrong, Butler, Jefferson, Lawrence and Mercer counties provide free dry, bagged or canned food to students.
BC3 is in the process of purchasing refrigeration units funded through part of a state Department of Education grant to accommodate delivered fresh, cold and frozen foods for students at several of BC3’s locations.
The grant, which followed BC3’s designation as a Hunger-Free Campus, also has helped fund a new meal-voucher program for Pioneer Pantry patrons to use in the Pioneer Cafe on BC3’s main campus.
Recon Brewing’s taproom locations are at 1401 Hastings Crescent, Bridgeville; 1747 N. Main St. Ext., Butler; and 301 Tillary Lane, Suite A, Cranberry Township.
Bill Foley is coordinator of news and media content at Butler County Community College.
