St. Joe’s teams up with Sterling Pig Brewery to create a Hawk Hill-themed beer

Unlike jerseys or T-shirts, St. Joseph’s most recent piece of merchandise won’t be sold in its campus bookstore, but it will be available for Hawks fans inside Hagan Arena next season.

St. Joe’s paired with Media-based Sterling Pig Brewery to create the Hawk Hill Hazy Session IPA, a co-branded beer. The Hawks announced the collaboration with an Instagram post on Tuesday.

Kevin Levy, the general manager of corporate sponsorships at St. Joe’s, said the collaboration between the Hawks and Sterling Pig has been in the works for “close to a year.”

“It’s more commonplace now, in college athletics, you see the co-branded there,” Levy said. “Sports and beer, they go hand-in-hand. Our executive team here at St. Joe’s Athletics, we were sitting around saying, ‘What about a co-branded beer?’ Everybody was on board with the idea, so we called up a few local breweries and found a great partner in Sterling Pig.”

Levy said St. Joe’s collaborated with Sterling Pig on all aspects of the beer, from the type it should brew to what the label design should look like.

“It was a long, fun, and collaborative process to get to this point,” Levy said. “We’re really excited with how it turned out and how it tastes.”

The beer itself is a light-bodied India pale ale that the Sterling Pig website describes as “juice forward and feather-light.” The brew, which is 5% alcohol by volume, is available now on draft at Sterling Pig’s restaurant in Media, as well as in 12-ounce cans online and in-store. The can’s red-and-black label features a cartoon illustration of a Hawk holding a hop flower.

St. Joe’s is not the first Big 5 school to launch a co-branded beer this year. La Salle, St. Joe’s Atlantic 10 Conference mate, partnered with East Falls-based Wissahickon Brewing Company to brew Explorer Ale, a German-style Kölsch sold this season at John Glaser Arena.

St. Joe’s declined to divulge the financial specifics of its partnership with Sterling Pig, but the beer will provide an additional revenue stream for the athletic department.

“We’re always looking for opportunities to make partnerships that make sense for us,” Levy said. “They’re going to help drive revenue, but more importantly, are really going to be something that our fans are going to clamor for. We think this collaboration will be a huge hit with our fans, our alumni, anybody in the St. Joe’s community that’s 21 or older.”

St. Joe’s plans to have its beer stocked for Hawks games at Hagan Arena when the 2026-27 college basketball season begins.

“This is something that, once our fans see this, they’re just going to have a big smile on their face and say, “Oh, this is really cool,” Levy said. “It’s something that just really checks all the boxes for us and is great for the university, great for the athletic department. And, most importantly, it’s great for the St. Joe’s community that want a product like this. I think you’ll see that there’s a great demand for this.”

While Hagan is unlikely to host any more games this season, the Hawks do have one team active in postseason play. The men’s basketball team accepted an invitation to the National Invitation Tournament. The unseeded Hawks will travel to No. 3 seed Colorado State for a first-round game on Wednesday (11 p.m., ESPNU).