Butler Downtown Beerfest brings together area breweries, including a forthcoming one

Butler now has three breweries that are participating: Reclamation Brewing, which organized this event, as well as Butler Brew Works and, just outside city limits, the new Recon Brewing.

Joining them and others is yet another nearby brewery that’s in the works: Missing Link Brewery.

Two guys, Steve Spence and Dan Kos, already have a location at 891 Evans City Road, or state Route 68, in a former craft store beside the Butler Farm Market, in Connoquenessing Township. They hope to complete renovationsand open by September.

Mr. Spence is the brewmaster, but the two — they’re engineers by day job — have been home brewing together for several years. After joking about going pro for about three years, they did the math and decided to open a brewery, with a two-barrel system. “We’re gonnago and have fun,” says Mr. Kos.

As they write on their website, “We are certainly not trying to reinvent the craft brewing industry or provide odd and crazy beer concoctions. We just want to serve a nice variety of drinkable beers in a fun family-friendly establishment.”

They’ll be pouring tastes of a half dozen of their brews — hefeweizen, roggenbier, Belgian-style wit, brown ale, Scotch wee heavy, a “sort of floral IPA” — at the festival, which runs from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday (the 3 to 4 p.m. VIP session sold out). Tickets, if any remain, are $40.20 (with taxes and fees) or $12.23 for designated driver, and some of the proceeds will be donated to nonprofit Butler Downtown.

For more on the brewery, you can watch missinglinksbrewery.com.

For more more on the fest, visit butlerbeerfest.com. The event — it also includes some local wine, mead and hard cider, as well as live music and food for purchase from mobile food vendors — will be moved if it rains to the third floor of the garage on South McKean Street.

In the meantime, yet another brewery is coming together in Butler County. Stick City Brewing Co. has a pending state license and aims to open early next year at 109 Irvine St. in Mars (stickcitybeer.com). Breanna Carrier says the brewery will be moving into one of the buildings of the town’s fire company, which is moving to a new home on Route 228. The name comes from what the family fondly calls its getaway in “the sticks” of rural Butler County. “It's where we go to recharge our batteries and connect with nature.”