Here are the recipes for the three beers you’ll see being brewed in the upcoming Chop & Brew episode about brewing for 311 Day! Two are related directly to the band/song titles/motifs and one is — as the band likes to say — “Random.” (Which also happens to be one of Top Five favorite 311 songs ever – just sayin’).

Here’s the background on all of this. I (Chip) am a huge 311 fan from the way-back to the here-and-now. I’ll explain more about my past with the band in the episode. When I first thought to have an episode center around brewing for 311 Day, I decided I wanted to brew before 311 Day so that I could release the episode on 311 Day (March 11 aka 3/11) and perhaps other homebrewing 311 fans would want to brew these recipes as well… or their own recipes, it’s all good. As it turned out, C&B fans on Twitter and Facebook really wanted the recipes made public before 311 Day, so here they are.

For some guidance along this journey, I reached out to 311 bassist P-Nut via Twitter to ask him what kinds of beer he, Tim, Nick, Chad & SA enjoyed. He tweeted back “hoppy ales, Belgian styles. Lots of kick lots of big flavor.” Great leads to go on. So I reached out to some fellow homebrewers to devise a great two-beer brew day and lo and behold some other awesome brodels showed up to brew a third and just hang out.

Here are the recipes for anyone interested in brewing them as well on 311 Day!

THE NAZZ

Session IPA

This is a session IPA recipe given to Chop & Brew by the great Drew Beechum, homebrew columnist for Beer Advocate, contributor to Zymurgy and all-around bad-ass homebrewer from the Maltose Falcons. It’s a riff on his popular Pliny the Toddler recipe with a different hop bill and schedule to highlight some notes of dank and tropical fruit. Both things I believe the band likes. Here’s what Drew sent:

This is an 11-gallon batch at ~70% efficiency

1.045OG, 55 IBU, 4.4 SRM

Mash grains at 152-153F for one hour:

8.5 lb Maris Otter

8.5 lb Domestic 2-Row

1.0 lb Cara Pils

Sparge, bring to boil, add 1.0 lb White Sugar and begin adding hops:

1.5 oz Warrior 15.5% 60 minutes

1.5 oz Columbus 11.4% 10 minutes

1.0 oz Falconer’s Flight 10.5% 5 minutes

1.0 oz 7C’s 10% 0 minutes

Drew added: “That’s basically the Toddler redux, but I’ve swapped the hops around to give you some dank from the Columbus and to use the two American hop blends to honor the band’s blend of styles.”

So, I took that and scaled it down to a 5-gallon Brew-In-A-Bag version by cutting the grains and hops in half. I love BIAB, f**k the naysayers.

Brewed it, chilled it to 58F and pitch two smack-packs of Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast. Boom.

This collaborative recipe is also featured alongside recipes from Don Osborn and Michael Dawson in the book Idiot’s Guide: Homebrewing by Daniel Ironsides. Show the guys some love and pick up a copy for yourself for homebrewer friends.

While I was brewing that beer, my friend Chris Paynes took P-Nut’s words literally and smashed up a Belgian Tripel and an IPA into this beauty:

GOLDEN SUNLIGHT

Belgian Triple IPA

Here is Chris’ recipe and notes:

STATS

Original Gravity: 1.070

The gravity post boil will actually be 1.062. Add 1# of sugar during the fermentation will add your remaining gravity points)

IBUs: 29

Color: 5.4 SRM

ABV: 7.5%

Style: Belgian Tripel / American West IPA

WATER & Additions:

50/50 Split between St. Paul Water and Chippewa Valley bottled water

1 whirfloc tablet at 20min

0.5tsp of Wyeast yeast nutrient at 20min left in the boil

GRAINS:

11.0 lb Franco Belges Pilsner (1.6-1.8 SRM) – 68.8%

3.0 lb Rice, Flaked (1.0 SRM) – 18.8%

0.5 lb Gambrinus Honey Malt (23.0 SRM) – 3.1%

0.5 lb Munich 10L (Briess) (10.0 SRM) – 3.1%

*1.0 lb Table Sugar (Add on Day 5 of fermentation) (1.0 SRM) – 6.3%

MASH

60 min Beta Amylase Rest at 145 degrees

15 min Alpha Amylase Rest at 155 degrees

Mashout at 169 degrees

HOPS

20 IBUs Centennial 90 min

9 IBUs Centennial 15 min

Flameout Hops (Steeped for 20 minutes below 150 degrees):

56 grams / 2 ounces Citra

42 grams / 1.5 ounces Centennial

YEAST

WLP 530 Abbey Ale or WLP 500 Trappist Ale Yeast

2L starter with nutrient on a stirplate 5 days prior to brewday

FERMENTATION

Aerate prior to pitching yeast

Aerate again 12-18 after pitching yeast

Ferment at 68F for the first 5 days and steadily let it free rise up into the mid to low 70’s for the remainder of the fermentation.

Day 5: Boil 1# of Table Sugar with water until it forms a syrup. Cool down syrup to room temp and pour into fermentation vessel. Gentle agitate vessel so the sugar fully mixes with yeast.

Day 10: Dry hop for 5 to 8 days with 56 grams / 2 ounces of Citra and 56 grams / 2 ounces of Amarillo. (Don’t worry about transferring to a secondary vessel)

Day 15-18: Bottle or keg at 2.6 volumes.

Aaaaaaand while we were brewing those beers, my homie Vaughn brewed a re-brew of Kentucky Common, a beer unrelated to the 311 theme of the day, but an amazing historical style that we’ll go into in a future episode. Check out Vaughn’s recipe here.

So there you have it. That’s what we did for our pre-311 Day brew. I hope the homebrewing 311 fans will dig these recipes or celebrate our love for the band and conconct their own recipe to brew this (and every) 311 Day.

Full episode coming soon.

Stay positive. Love your life.

Chop for Chop, Brew for Brew

Chip