Naming a beer

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andysim

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If I find recipe, change the ingredients and quantities slighty, can I make it my own?

Will the beer police hunt me down if I do this?
 
Of course you can call it your own! You brewed it- it's all yours!



Unless it originated from one of my recipes. That it needs to be prefaced with Yooper's ___________and royalties can be paid directly to my paypal account. :D
 
That depends. If you're taking a 20+ year old recipe from a book we've all read, and adding in 1 tsp Irish Moss, we'll know, and we'll let you hear about it. If you're replacing 4 lbs of MO with something altogether different, it might be a big enough change to be called a new recipe. Use your own best judgment.

Look at it like this, if you spent years writing a novel, then I came along and changed up a few words here and there but left the story/plot/character development/dialog mostly intact, would you be upset at my plagiarism?

At the same time, many of the recipes here pretty much qualify as "open source." I don't think EdWort is going to get mad if you add in 2 lbs of kiwi and post a recipe for Kiwi Apfelwein (which sounds delicious IMHO) but at the same time, it would only be right to give credit to Ed for the original recipe and the inspiration.
 
i think we all have taken recipes and at one time or another, changed a small % of an malt or two and called it our own. i think that is fine. if you repost the recipe, just say i somewhere who you took it from and what you changed and i think all will be ok. Lets face it, with all the microbrewed IPA's in the USA, you don't think it's possible for a few to be really close but not exactly the same. ;) p.s. i love beer!!!
 
The IIPA I have fermenting was based roughly off a recipe I found here. I made it a double and changed up the hops a bit, then named it. I'm sure if someone looked at the two recipes side-by-side, they'd see it. But I consider it to basically be my recipe. How many movies out there are basically Romeo and Juliet without the name? If people enjoy something, people are going to keep remaking it.
 
i think we all have taken recipes and at one time or another, changed a small % of an malt or two and called it our own. i think that is fine. if you repost the recipe, just say i somewhere who you took it from and what you changed and i think all will be ok. Lets face it, with all the microbrewed IPA's in the USA, you don't think it's possible for a few to be really close but not exactly the same. ;) p.s. i love beer!!!

I agree with this. If you are on this website its good to acknowledge the use somebody's recipe with a modification. When it comes to drinking it and sharing it with friends its as good as yours. Especially since you made it.
 
Dry Stout is Dry Stout is Dry Stout. I don't care if it's Matts Dry Stout or Bills Dry Stout. They will be different, but the recipe the same. IPA is kinda the same, though not. My IPA is based off of Edworts, but as said above, I changed up the quantity, the hops and really used his as a base model. He is not my mouth though and I don't think our two IPA's are anything alike. So is it mine, yes, did I read his recipe, yes.

Alton Brown makes some great blueberry muffins that I claim as my own.
 
If you brewed it, it's yours. For example, I call my Best Bitter mine, and named it Pride of Raubsville, even though it's pretty much a bog-standard grist and hops profile.

As someone above noted, there is nothing new under the sun (well, almost nothing). There's a finite number of ingredients and a finite number of ways you can combine them and still end up with something recognizably beer. This is especially true in the most basic styles, like Pilsner or (also mentioned above) Dry Irish Stout.

So brew away, and call it what you will. Chances are that, due to a wide variety of circumstances, your brew of my recipe will be appreciably different, even if you follow all my ingredients to the gram and my procedures to the letter.

Cheers!

Bob
 
yah i know im that guy who awakens a year dead thread but oh well here goes, so far in my opinion the answers to the OP are for the most part completely wrong:

Heres the answer to this looming dilemma. If you formulate the recipe, not just "tweak" it you name it, if not give a nod and keep the name the same as the person you got it from called it. I just dont see how you if you didnt take the time to formulate the recipe yourself test it, rebrew it, tweak it rebrew it, tweak it, rebrew it you can pass it off as something originally yours, me personally there is no way I would even want or consider doing that. As a matter of fact when I label my beer if it is from a recipe out of the complete joy of homebrewing or brewing classic styles i give a nod to the author of the recipe right on the label be it jamil or charlie or whoever formulated the recipe that I essentially copied and stole whether I myself brewed it or not. I dont know why you would want to pass something off as yours when it is truly not, so let this be encourangement to go forward and design your own recipes and try them out and tweak them and than you can proudly name them something unique to you and your love of brewing and you can put your name proudly on the label and noone will wonder whether its a book recipe or a kit because it will say it all on the label that this beer is genetically and uniquely yours. flame on rant over.
 
Someone let me know who came up with the Czech Pilsner recipe that has 100% Unmodified Moravian Malt and Saaz Hops. We've got 1000's of brewers to bust.
:rolleyes:
 
I would say that even if two brewers use exactly the same recipe, you're going to be able to tell a difference. there are so many variables from mash temp to fermentation temp to water chemistry, to crush of the grains, etc. that make slight differences in various attributes of a beer. As others have said, I would note when there was an inspiration for a brew when posting the recipe anywhere, and I would certainly give credit if I used someone else's recipe verbatim, but I think in the end, each batch is it's own creation.
 
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