Fans going to Middle Tennessee State football games this fall will have the chance to experience a new addition to Floyd Stadium.

The Blue Raider Beer Garden will make its debut in the south end zone thanks to a partnership with Hop Springs Beer Park, Steel Barrel Brewery and the MTSU Fermentation Science program.

Fans 21 and over can enter through the field entrance free with their game ticket.

MTSU Athletic Director Chris Massaro said it's about improving the fan experience and attracting a younger demographic.

"For the social piece of it, it'll go two ways for people who want to go in the south end zone and drink their craft beers and then go down to a field level and watch the game from there," Massaro said. "It'll be a spectacular place to watch a football game."

After one year of selling alcohol at home games, MTSU wanted to take that experience to the next level.

The garden will sell Steel Barrel craft beers and grilled food and feature an area for cornhole, giant Jenga and other games.

Like in the rest of the stadium, alcohol sales will stop after the third quarter.

“We are hopeful that this project will both enhance our fan experience at Floyd Stadium and provide additional exposure for our Fermentation Science program in our College of Basic and Applied Sciences,” MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee said in a release.

Students in MTSU's Fermentation Science program will provide ideas and input to Hop Springs for the brewery to create small-batch brews that will only be served in the beer garden. Each beer will have a different name with a theme related to the week's opponent.

Steel Barrel's brewery is housed at Hop Springs and through a partnership with both, includes MTSU's Fermentation Science laboratory.

“It’s all come about because of the opportunity for the experience at MT football games to be more fun,” Mark Jones, an MTSU alumnus and co-owner of Hop Springs and Steel Barrel said in a release. “You have people who are getting hands-on experience, and their hearts are in the business. We actually just hired the first graduate of fermentation science full-time, so we’re pretty pumped up about all of it."

More: How Vanderbilt and Tennessee can learn from MTSU's alcohol sales at sporting events

Reach Joe Spears at jspears2@gannett.com or 731-343-4923. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @joe_spears7.