Welcome to our Mashup Monday Spotlight Series, where we feature up-and-coming brewers from around the world. Last week, we got some insight into the workings of three friends in Louisiana embarking on a bubbly endeavor. This week, we’re taking a look at a furrier trio of friends in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, who are also taking a once-hobby and turning it into something with the potential to grow like a curtain of facial hair. We happily present the crew at Three Beards Brewing and their tales of fizz and fuzz. Crack open a bottle, enjoy their story, let us know what you think, and remember – if you want to have a spot on this weekly homebrew blog, shoot us an email at mashup@bottletrade.com and we’ll help you get set up.



What are your names and where are you from?

Nate Badman (Northumberland, Pa), Levi Strouse (Shamokin Dam, Pa), Matt Reinard (Northumberland, Pa) and Sean Brennan (Richmond, VA).



Picture provided courtesy of Three Beards Brewing.

How long have you been homebrewing?

Nate and Sean began extract brewing in 2011. In 2012 they made the leap to all­grain and brought along Levi, who had some previous experience in wine making with his family. At this time we established ourselves as Three Beards Brewing. Sean moved to Richmond, VA in 2013 so we brought Matt in to join us despite Sean still having an active role and the best beard.

When did you know you wanted to brew your own beer?

We all used to drink a lot of beer and we got tired of the same taste day in and day out. With the recent explosion in craft beers and all of us having the desire to try new things we thought “why can’t we make our own beer?”. The intention of Three Beards was originally to brew beer for ourselves and our friends to enjoy at parties as there wasn’t really a place in our small part of PA to find craft beers. So, what better way to feed your addiction than creating your own? Since the beginning it’s taken on a life of its own and become much more than any of us thought it would.

We know brewing can be a hobby, but do you plan on making it a living?

I don’t think any of us have delusions of grandeur of our brewing venture becoming as large as something like Dogfish Head or Stone, although, we do think the beers we create are comparable to those breweries. All we are looking to do is to have a space to create truly unique beers and not just your DIPA and coffee stouts that are common place now. If we can have creative brewing freedom and make a couple bucks on the side to do it comfortably, that would be ideal for the time being.

What are some of your long-term goals?

Our long term goals include branching out to some more regional brewfests and submitting our beer to some BJCP competitions to get honest feedback from beer lovers outside of our area. To continue pushing the envelope within the brewing community, and becoming successful at our craft. We’re just four guys who love what we do and if we could become self sufficient doing it, well, that’s the American dream. If we could avoid liver cirrhosis that would be cool too.



Picture provided courtesy of Three Beards Brewing.

What are some of your favorite breweries/brewers?

Obviously as far as brewers go we’ll always have love for Sam Calagione. We’re sure (just like a lot of other people) Dogfish Head was an early introduction to craft beer. Dogfish head is a great success story that still does some amazing things, constantly tries new ideas, and hasn’t caved in to pressure to create mediocre beer for profit. We also love James Watt and Martin Dickie from Brew Dogs for making us laugh. Such a fun and notso serious approach to brewing. You can tell they love what they do and they are great at it.It’s tough to make this list. But here’s some of our favorites as well as some local breweries we enjoy:

Matt­ – Springhouse Brewing Company

Sean­ – Lickinghole Creek Craft Brewery

Nate­ – Oskar Blues, Troegs, Dogfish Head, Ayinger

Levi­ – Founders, Pizza Boy, Tired Hands

Locally were big fans of Selin’s Grove Brewing Company, Turkey Hill Brewing Co., and Elk Creek Aleworks. Goes without saying that we also love Victory, Yards, Troegs, and Neshaminy Creek brewing in PA, as well as Hardywood Park, Legend Brewing, Strangeways Brewing and center of the universe in Richmond.

What style of beer do you find to be the toughest to brew? The easiest?

For the toughest, it’s probably a toss up between lagers, dunkelweizens, and brown ales. Lagers take too much time and are a bit more finicky with temperature control in fermenting. We haven’t been able to nail down a mind blowing dunkelweizen recipe despite a few tries. Browns seem to be the “red headed step child” of the brewing styles and for good reason. They seem tough to balance. Easiest style would have to be your SMaSH beers. Single Malt and Single Hop. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

What are you currently brewing?

We have a few things going in preparation for the Selinsgrove Hops, Vines, and Wines Festival:

-Wheat Imperial IPA (14% abv. 221 IBU’s. “Wheat wine” continually hopped for 90 minutes.)

-Peach Rings Berliner Weiss (4.0% abv. Sweet and sour notes.)

-Cookie Dough Stout (5.8% abv. Sweet dessert stout. )



Picture provided courtesy of Three Beards Brewing.

Do you have recipe you are willing to share for other brewers?

NO….Well Maybe….ok you talked us into it:

Recipe: 3BB ­ Shadowfax WIPA 5g

Style: American IPA

TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications

Boil Size: 9.28 gal

Post Boil Volume: 7.28 gal

Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal

Bottling Volume: 5.25 gal

Estimated OG: 1.056 SG

Estimated Color: 3.1 SRM

Estimated IBU: 106.5 IBUs

Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %

Est Mash Efficiency: 85.4 %

Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients: ­­­­­­­­­­­­ Amt Name Type # %/IBU 6 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 49.6 %

4 lbs 4.0 oz Pale Wheat (Dingemans) (1.6 SRM) Grain 2 35.1 %

12.0 oz Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 3 6.2 %

5.6 oz Acidulated (Weyermann) (1.8 SRM) Grain 4 2.9 %

12.0 oz Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar 5 6.2 %

1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] ­ Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 14.5 IBUs

1.00 oz Chinook [13.00 %] ­ Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 37.7 IBUs

1.50 oz Falconer’s Flight 7C’s Blend [9.50 %] ­ Hop 8 31.8 IBUs

1.50 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] ­ Boil 10.0 min Hop 9 20.5 IBUs

1.00 oz Ahtanum [6.00 %] ­ Boil 1.0 min Hop 10 0.7 IBUs

1.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] ­ Boil 1.0 min Hop 11 1.3 IBUs

1.0 pkg San Diego Super Yeast (White Labs #WLP09 Yeast 12 ­

1.00 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] ­ Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 13 0.0 IBUs

1.00 oz Amarillo [9.20 %] ­ Dry Hop 0.0 Days Hop 14 0.0 IBUs

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out

Total Grain Weight: 12 lbs 1.6 oz

Mash In Add 18.19 qt of water at 161.7 F 150.0 F 75 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 7.10 gal water at 168.0 F

Brewing is a lot of trial and error. What was the biggest mistake you have made brewing?

Not getting our water tested sooner. Since we now know the specifics of our water to alter it to be like London well water, Dublin, Burton­, Trent, etc. This has had a significant difference in the outcome of our beers.

What is your current homebrew setup? (i.e. 5 gallon, 10 gallon, All-

Grain,Extract, etc.)

Batch size → 10-15g (5g for 13% and up)

Yeast → 2L flask with stir plate

Mash tun → 15.5g stainless keg

HLT → 15.5g stainless keg

Boil kettle → 25g stainless kettle

Hopping → Homemade hop spider

Cooling → 40 plate dudadiesel plate chiller

Fermenting → 15g vessel

Measurements → Thermocouple, refractometer, blichmann thrumometer

Software → Beersmith



Pictures provided courtesy of Three Beards Brewing.

What would be your ideal brewhouse?

We are hoping to start with a 7bbl system and work from that. Our ideal brewhouse would be anything over a 15bbl system so you can really get into the local distribution end of things. As far as atmosphere, we really want to have a place that is laid back, with good music and a social setting. Also we’d like to do a Community Garden, growing fresh veggies and our own hops. We want to be a brewery that is actively involved with the community it’s in.

Is there a brewery you would like to work for?

A dream brewery? Oh man! If the four of us could get together and work at Dogfish head! Spend our weeks brewing some of the best and innovative beers in the world. That would be rad. Oh and not to mention collecting that free case of beer at the end of the week doesn’t hurt. Really any place that gives their employees a chance to get a recipe together and show off their ability to brew beer on a large scale!

Do you have a brewery name already chosen out? If so, what is it?

Three Beards Brewing, The new pride of PA.

Any advice you would give to other up­and­coming brewers?

1) There are NO rules! Don’t be afraid to brew bad beer. We have a lot of ideas of different styles and flavors of beer and we just go for it. Just recently we brewed a berliner weisse with lactose. This will hopefully give us some sour and sweet then we are going to rack that over peaches/apricots to hopefully give us an end product that tastes like peach rings.

2) Quick disconnects! They save so much time and busted knuckles.

3) Get your water tested and experiment with different water profiles.

4) Be honest with yourself and your beer.

5) Yeast starters.

We participate in 3 or 4 brewfests in a year. The cost of the beers and the insurance comes out of our own pockets and can be a bitter pill to swallow. The feeling you get when someone drinks your beer and gives you the “Damn, that’s a good beer” look is worth all the time and money you put into making it.

To learn more about Three Beards Brewing, please give them a follow at:

https://www.facebook.com/threebeardsbrewing

https://instagram.com/threebeards_brewing

https://untappd.com/ThreeBeardsBrewing

https://twitter.com/beardsbrewing

https://youtu.be/Rm8o0­HGYPA