At what point is a recipe your own

When using a found recipe sometimes we must make changes due to restrictions, unavailable ingrediats, what have you. At what point do you consider that recipe changed enough so that it becomes a new brew?

For example, when brewing an Imperial Stout recently I had to change the hops called for as they were anavailable. I substituted hops with similar charactaristics, and would not call that brew my own.
On the other hand, I gave Papazian's Palace Bitter a try and ended up using a 0.5# more DME than called for (called for 4.5), plus 0.25 oz. more Fuggles in the bittering portion of the boil. I had my first taste of it last night and I could not call this a bitter. It has a very nice, smooth caramelly sweetness, followed by a dry, hoppy (but not bitter) finish. I like it a lot, but I cannot call this a Bitter or a Pale Ale (not sure what it is now - thoughts?).

So, when do you call a found recipe your own?

If you change any aspect at all of the original recipe (a hop, a malt, a temperature) I'd say it's now yours. You could say 'inspired by XYZ' if you felt the need.

Regarding your bitter, without working out the values I'd say you either have a best bitter or even just a regular pale ale.

I agree. There are thousands of recipes out there, many that are extremely simple or even identical, especially in the case of simple recipes. Changing one ingredient by a half a pound or so can be enough to change the beer noticeably, if not significantly... And of course, the same recipe brewed by multiple people is going to come out different anyway. If you feel like you've customized a recipe and made it your own, then you should be able to 'claim' it as your own.

If someone has a really GREAT recipe that they're really proud of, that's popular and/or award-winning, then I would say you should be more conscientious about taking credit for it without significant changes, but again it's up to your conscience in the end. Like, for example, EdWort's Haus Pale Ale. It's a pretty simple recipe, and no doubt many others have brewed something very similar to it without realizing it, but whenever I tweak the recipe when I brew it, I still refer to it as a modification of his recipe, not as an original one of my own - it's well-known, delicious, and Ed deserves all the credit for it. But if someone threw together a simple recipe, had only brewed it a few times and didn't make a big deal out of it, I wouldn't feel so strongly about it.

It's yours when you feel like you understand what every ingredient and amount contributes to to the beer-- when you know why you added a hop at 45 instead of 60 and why you added .5lbs of Crystal Malt 60°L instead of .25 of 90°L.

i agree with the poster who i will refer to as Jeep, since that's what the olllllo thing evokes with the tires underneath.

i write down all my recipes and ive not yet made one without a change from the original source, if there was one. that said, none of them are my own because those changes were made without the knowledge i now have from reading and experimenting.,

olllllo said:

It's yours when you feel like you understand what every ingredient and amount contributes to to the beer-- when you know why you added a hop at 45 instead of 60 and why you added .5lbs of Crystal Malt 60°L instead of .25 of 90°L.

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I agree. If you tweak a recipe to change the flavor, body, color, etc. and understand how you did it, then it is now your recipe. Let's say you change the base malt by 1/2# and keep the rest the same just for the sake of changing the recipe...then I think it is not really your recipe. On the other hand, if double the amount of Special B in a porter recipe from 2 or 3 oz to 7-8oz, then that will contribute a different characteristic to the finished product. The amount of change necessary to qualify a recipe as your own is relative based on the original recipe and what you change.

Shrug. The closest thing I ever did to making my own recipe is changing an all chinook IPA to an all Simcoe because that's all I had enough of on hand.

I'm pretty content just following recipes for the foreseeable future.

I clone a lot, but I create a few as well.

At the very least, I consider all my beers my own "variation". Usually I dial down the ABV and need to up the crystal % and mash temp to compensate for the lower grain bill.

In many cases, I start with a blank canvas and go from there. I'm not afraid to experiment.

A few recent examples:
Sacred Summit Pale Ale
Sterling Gold
Sterling Rye
Six Shooter Pale Ale
Orange Kolsch
Rye Not IPA
Centennial Blonde

Now these, are my recipes.

And now that I think about it. Nobody gave me an exact Kona Pale Ale recipe, or the NewCastle recipe. I searched, gathered what I could and filled in the blanks. So I guess that anywhere that you come up with a clone that you created....tis your recipe as well.

A recipe is yours when you "feel" like it's yours. This is such a subjective question, that it almost has to have a subjective answer.

I usually give credit where credit is due when making a variation of someone else's recipe. I've brewed several of my own, original recipes as well. All of them are mine, but I always feel a greater sense of accomplishment when I start from scratch and wind up with a great result.

This was supposed to be more of a phylisophical question. But everyone has been giving more direct answers. I do appreciate all the posts and opinions.
Adding the amoung of DME and hops to Papazian's Bitter does make it my own in my opinion now. And I like it!

I feel similar to Yuri on this. If you feel without guilt that it is "your own" then I suppose it would be. However, my own feeling on the subject is twofold. One, it is inevitable that when brewing to 'style' that your recipe will be a near replica of something, somewhere, someone has done. Nothing new under the sun. Second, I think it's really your own when you sit down, with pen and paper and dream it up. Of course this will be a combination of your own experience, capability, artistic ability and creativity. Nothing more, nothing less. If it happens to fit a 'style' or mimic someone else's recipe then I say who cares.

Now if you take someone else's recipe and tweak it, then I'd say it's an interpretation of 'so and so's recipe'. As they say, copy-cat's just like your idea. That's why we have clones and kits. Or similarly, if I dream it up I don't place it under the bounds of style, I find it too confining in the sense that people have expectations and those expectations are often judge and jury before the trial. Experimental brews I usually reserve for the open minded. :fro:

The beer produced is always yours. If it is your recipe or not does not seem so significant. I like jeeps answer if you want to split hairs.

great thread! and a salient question! (I was thinking of trying to enter next year's Sam Adams homebrew competition.)

the brew I wanted to enter has not yet been brewed (still working it out), but it WAS inspired by an article/recipe by Bob Kauffman in BYO.

I think to see if it qualifies as my own now, I'll email Bob. if he's mortified by what I did to it, I'll take sole ownership.

Brewpastor said:

The beer produced is always yours. If it is your recipe or not does not seem so significant.

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QFT.

and your beer will be different than someone else's beer using the exact same recipe. temperature, technique, time, etc. make a huge difference in a brew.

that being said, i rarely do anyone else's recipe anymore and even when i do, i usually modify it to fit my style.

i did brew the 08/08/08, tho and i still want to try orfy's hobgoblin.

other than those, the only straight recipe i've used in the last couple of years was the apfelwein...i don't think i've even duplicated one of my own recipes in that time...that's just how i roll

:cross:

Yuri_Rage said:

A recipe is yours when you "feel" like it's yours. This is such a subjective question, that it almost has to have a subjective answer.

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Very well put.
I came to terms with this when one time, when I was following someone else's recipe, I had changed the hops, changed the malt bill, & changed the yeast. HHHMMMM... I doubt if the water was the same, and there isn't much else left.

OK, sorta my recipe, I can live with that.

The one caveat here is the recipes that start out with 6-10 lbs of base malt, those are all mine, I invented that.

olllllo said:

The one caveat here is the recipes that start out with 6-10 lbs of base malt, those are all mine, I invented that.

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Maybe so, but the whole idea of using hops in homebrew, just like the big guys, that was my idea. I was getting tired of paying those huge prices during the lawn clipping shortage and thought "why not hops?" The rest is history.

Dammit, we're going to hear from the yeast guy any minute now.

That would be my wife...

DeathBrewer said:

QFT.

and your beer will be different than someone else's beer using the exact same recipe. temperature, technique, time, etc. make a huge difference in a brew.
:cross:

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And I couldn't agree more. There will always be SOMETHING different with the way you brewed a recipie from that which someone else brewed.