Maryville’s craft beer festival Hops in the Hills to hold VIP event at MC Downtown Center, feature MC beers for tasting
June 13, 2025
How well has the Maryville College Downtown Center served the school’s Fermentation Science program? Put it this way: Less than four months after students of Dr. Nathan Duncan brewed the first Maryville College beer, they were winning awards for their original recipes.
Now, the Downtown Center will serve as the VIP hub for the annual Maryville beer festival Hops in the Hills, and on tap for the event are six original-recipe brews that were concocted by the brewing course FRM-201, “Principles of Brewing Science,” taught by Duncan, an associate professor of chemistry at Maryville College and coordinator of the College’s Fermentation Science minor.
“The Downtown Center has given us a hub to teach our students how to get into brewing in a way that is just so far beyond what we were doing before,” said Duncan, who began lecturing on the chemical processes involved in beer-brewing almost a decade ago. By 2018, students were able to take two beer-related courses, “CHM149: Chemistry of Beer” and “EXP200: Introduction to Brewing,” and the Fermentation Science minor was launched in the fall of 2023.
“Since our students have access to some of the best equipment that is available, it has allowed me to give them a very accelerated learning curve on many of the details of the process, and they really master a lot in a short amount of time,” Duncan added. “It’s very telling that in our first brew class in the Downtown Center, two of our students took second- and third-place at the ‘Homebrew Rendezvous’ (a homebrew competition held April 12 by the Blount County Homebrew Club and Tennessee Valley Homebrewers).”
New for 2025: VIP event
This year marks the 10th year of Hops in the Hills, held in downtown Maryville as part of the City of Maryville’s annual Summer on Broadway extravaganza, which takes place June 20 and 21 throughout the downtown area and will feature live music, craft vendors, diving dogs, theatrical presentations, food trucks, a classic car show, and the Hops in the Hills event. The beer festival kicks off at 5 p.m. Saturday, June 21, in Theater in the Park, the location of the Maryville Greenway Amphitheater below the Blount County Courthouse … and almost within sight of the Downtown Center’s patio deck.
“This year, all of the beers served at Hops in the Hills (by Maryville College) are new recipes from the 2025 brewing class,” said Duncan, who also serves as one of the festival’s planners. “This is year 10 for Hops in the Hills and our fifth time at the event, which kind of hit its stride a few years ago. We aim to keep it more intimate with a focus on the visitor experience, which is why we don’t have multiple shifts of visitors coming through but instead choose to keep the number of participants the same and allow people to experience the whole event.”
Ticket sales are capped at 1,000, he added, and usually sell out as the event draws closer. Tickets are still available for the 2025 Hops in the Hills event, but the 75 tickets for VIP experience, new for this year, sold out almost immediately, Duncan said. Committee members have discussed adding a VIP experience for years, he added, and the 10th anniversary of the festival’s launch seemed as good a time as any … and the Downtown Center as good a place as any.
“As a group, we decided that it would be great to hold it adjacent to the main event in the Downtown Center,” Duncan said. “We made it a limited event, and it will be held before the main festival (at 3:30 p.m.).”
The event will be hosted and staffed by Duncan’s students, he added, and will feature special beers from some of the festival’s participating breweries that have limited availability.
“I believe it sold out so quickly for two reasons: One, the craft beer enthusiasts in the area were eager to get access to enjoy specialty beers they will not find at the festival in a space that is quite literally built for craft beer education, innovation and excellence,” said Hannah Perkins, director of the MC Downtown Center. “Two, people are still interested and intrigued to see what the Downtown Center is all about, and it’s not even a year old yet! Any opportunity for an exclusive and unique experience will draw people in.”
As the home to the Hospitality and Regional Identity major and Fermentation Science minor, Perkins pointed out, the facility’s first priority is to ensure the success of both programs of study. The opportunity for students to participate in and host an event like the VIP experience serves as the sort of experiential learning — “direct, real-world experience that directly complements the skills they are learning within these programs,” Perkins said.
“The Fermentation Science minor is still very small, but we are very active,” Duncan added. “The program has created and provided beers for a variety of groups on and off campus. The most exciting things we did this spring were the Homebrew Rendezvous, the (American Museum of Science and Energy) Gala, and now the Alumni Brewday.”
Brewing galore on tap
The alumni event, which took place on Saturday, June 7, coincided with the start of KT Days — the College’s annual summer give-back program during which alums return to campus to take part in various renovation, clean-up and restoration projects — as well as the 150th anniversary of the Maryville College Alumni Association, Duncan said. When Alumni Affairs Director Jennifer Phillips Triplett ’07 approached him about brewing a Maryville College beer to commemorate the organization’s establishment, Duncan turned over the request to his class.
“Their last task as a class this spring was to create recipes,” Duncan said. “We have five recipes, and we decided to do an open brewing day, which was attended by alumni — 15 of them, including seven who are former brewing students going back to our first class in 2018! — who brewed the first four of these recipes. Later, on Aug. 21, we will have a public tasting of the Alumni Association brews at the Downtown Center, where all five will be sampled, and participants will get to vote on the winner, which we will brew this fall in time for an official release at Homecoming.”
Getting alumni involved in the brewing process, he added, is a way to provide them with another connection to their alma mater … and getting students involved in brewing for a festival like Hops in the Hills, he pointed out, aligns with the College’s mission to be an institution “of and for the region.”
“While we have always included student beers and student recipes, this year, I actually didn’t make any of the beer — and I’m very excited about their creations!” Duncan said.
Some of the beers include a West Highland Stout, made with coffee provided by Vienna Coffee (which recently announced the summer opening of a Vienna franchise on the MC campus) by Jewell West ’25; a Belgian wit (a Belgian-style wheat beer) from an award-winning recipe by the father of Jaklyn Rutter ’25; “Sizzle ‘n’ Snap,” an jalapeno-pickle beer by Izzy Wright ’25; “The Tartan,” a Belgian-style dubbel (an ale) by Kaitlin Koster ’25; the “Dirty Blonde,” a blonde ale by Reese Bailey ’25; and a concoction by Colby Huffman ’25 “that is like nothing else; it’s a secret that if people want to know about and taste they’ve got to come,” Duncan said.
Not only is it an opportunity for beer connoisseurs to dip their toes into the local craft beer scene, Duncan said, it’s a chance — especially for those with VIP tickets — for festival-goers to see that Maryville College is tailoring the two majors headquartered in the Downtown Center into a feeder program that will help that scene grow.
“The craft beer scene is in flux right now,” he said. “In our region, we have some that have closed and some new ones that have opened. Breweries are learning that they need more than just good beer to make it; events and a hospitality focus are the things that keep customers coming back. Our program, along with the Hospitality and Regional Identity major, is in a great place to help contribute to that.”
