Do you think the professional breweries tell the truth

[PleasantValleyHops]

Well. To help u all out now. I live approx 5 miles from flying dog. And they are at just about every local homebrew meeting and host two a year at the brewery where they open their tap room to us w bottomless fills. And that happen to be their this month where they announced they are going to be doing clone kits! And the only way to get them is thru the local homebrew shop in town or pick up from the brewery. Ingredients are going to be measured when u get there and put into bags right then. U also get detailed instructions from the head brewers with it. And for all the skeptics. They pull the yeast off of the beer right then and there for u. So u get two viles Of slurry. They dont give you water additions bc everyones water is slighty different. So they give a profile that is the closest to it. I know flying dog is different bc they truely do support homebrewing and local business. But they are doing with their monthly releases so a homebrewer can brew their beer and when release time comes you can have them side by side to compare.

 

[GrogNerd]

just spoke with the brewmaster at Sweetwater Tavern in my hometown and he was more than happy to share the recipe from his very tasty Black IPA

didn't hurt that I drank a pint right there and brought home a growler

he also told me that if I let him know ahead of time, he would hook me up with some of their yeast

 

[Piratwolf]

he also told me that if I let him know ahead of time, he would hook me up with some of their yeast

That right there is a WIN!!!

 

[BigRedHopHead]

My belief is this truth telling is quite varied. I think you will have better chances of getting info from local breweries if you are local and drink their beer like a local does. I asked Odell BC from Fort Collins CO back in december for some guidance on their Isolation Ale. Not straight quantities, but just the grain bill and hops. Told them I would play around with it and figure the rest out. NOT a word back from them. I am disappointed, at the minimum at least an email saying they have a policy against distribution of recipe info would have been understandable.

Honestly, when at the point of purchase now, unless it is something I have never had from Odell I tend to pass on their beer. Simply because I was never given the time or effort of a easy reply, good or bad. My local breweries have never treated me this way. Maybe Odell is getting too big to care about a singular home brewer. I don't know......But they sure aren't doing themselves any favors either. Buy local, drink local is my motto these days.

 

[GrogNerd]

My belief is this truth telling is quite varied. I think you will have better chances of getting info from local breweries if you are local and drink their beer like a local does. I asked Odell BC from Fort Collins CO back in december for some guidance on their Isolation Ale. Not straight quantities, but just the grain bill and hops. Told them I would play around with it and figure the rest out. NOT a word back from them. I am disappointed, at the minimum at least an email saying they have a policy against distribution of recipe info would have been understandable.

Honestly, when at the point of purchase now, unless it is something I have never had from Odell I tend to pass on their beer. Simply because I was never given the time or effort of a easy reply, good or bad. My local breweries have never treated me this way. Maybe Odell is getting too big to care about a singular home brewer. I don't know......But they sure aren't doing themselves any favors either. Buy local, drink local is my motto these days.

I actually had the same thing happen with Sweetwater.

I went to their website where they say "email the brewmaster, he'll be happy to respond!" so I wrote him. Told him how much I liked his BIPA, understood if he couldn't share the recipe but would like to know what hops he used

not a word back

I brought this up on my brew club's forum and they said, "oh, NO! they're a chain and you wrote to the chain's brewmaster. you have to talk to Joe, that particular restaurant's brewmaster... we're in good with him, we'll let him know you want the recipe. Just go in and talk to him, he'll hook you up"

 

[kombat]

I have never been interested in cloning any commercial brew. What is the point?

I can think of several reasons.

1.) Maybe the beer isn't available in your region. For example, I'm in Canada. I recently had an opportunity to taste my first DFH 60 Minute IPA. It was delicious. I want more. But I'm in Canada and it's not available up here. So I found a "clone" recipe and made my own.

2.) Maybe the beer is no longer available anywhere. Maybe the brewery that made your favorite beer got bought out by AB-InBev and they've butchered the recipe to make it more appealing to the masses. Maybe your favorite brewery just plain went bankrupt and closed up shop.

3.) Maybe it's a seasonal beer that's only available certain times of the year.

4.) Maybe the brewery changed their recipe. One of my favorite beers was from a local brewery, but every few months, they change the hops they use to brew it. I loved it when they made it with Zythos hops, but their current batch uses Summit, which I'm not a fan of. So they shared the recipe with me, and I made it myself, using the Zythos hops I prefer.

5.) Cost. Note that this is near the bottom of my list, but for some penny-pinchers, it's a real factor for them. They can make an almost identical beer for less cost than buying it. Especially up here, north of the border, where a 6-pack of decent craft beer will run you $15.

6.) The challenge. It can be fun to see how closely we can duplicate our favorite beers, and you can learn a lot in the process of trying.

There's 6 good reasons right there.

 

[GrogNerd]

I can think of several reasons.

1.) Maybe the beer isn't available in your region. For example, I'm in Canada. I recently had an opportunity to taste my first DFH 60 Minute IPA. It was delicious. I want more. But I'm in Canada and it's not available up here. So I found a "clone" recipe and made my own.

2.) Maybe the beer is no longer available anywhere. Maybe the brewery that made your favorite beer got bought out by AB-InBev and they've butchered the recipe to make it more appealing to the masses. Maybe your favorite brewery just plain went bankrupt and closed up shop.

3.) Maybe it's a seasonal beer that's only available certain times of the year.

4.) Maybe the brewery changed their recipe. One of my favorite beers was from a local brewery, but every few months, they change the hops they use to brew it. I loved it when they made it with Zythos hops, but their current batch uses Summit, which I'm not a fan of. So they shared the recipe with me, and I made it myself, using the Zythos hops I prefer.

5.) Cost. Note that this is near the bottom of my list, but for some penny-pinchers, it's a real factor for them. They can make an almost identical beer for less cost than buying it. Especially up here, north of the border, where a 6-pack of decent craft beer will run you $15.

6.) The challenge. It can be fun to see how closely we can duplicate our favorite beers, and you can learn a lot in the process of trying.

There's 6 good reasons right there.

all good points. I'll add my own:

7.) just because I friggin want to

 

[kombat]

I am frequently amused by people who "clone" a beer they've never had. I get what they mean, but if you've never had it, how can you reasonably a. know that it isn't overhyped turd sauce in a bottle, b. your clone was indeed a clone and simply not another variation of a recipe?

By choosing a popular, well-reviewed recipe, of course.

The DFH 60-minute clone I brewed was using Yooper's recipe. It's the most popular thread in the IPA database on this website, with more than twice as many replies as the next-closest recipe (Bell's Two Hearted). It's been viewed 365,000 times and is rated 5 stars.

If it turns out to be "turd sauce in a bottle," then it's pretty well-reviewed, and thus I can only assume that DFH 60 Minute IPA itself also tastes like "turd sauce in a bottle."

 

[GrogNerd]

By choosing a popular, well-reviewed recipe, of course.

The DFH 60-minute clone I brewed was using Yooper's recipe. It's the most popular thread in the IPA database on this website, with more than twice as many replies as the next-closest recipe (Bell's Two Hearted). It's been viewed 365,000 times and is rated 5 stars.

If it turns out to be "turd sauce in a bottle," then it's pretty well-reviewed, and thus I can only assume that DFH 60 Minute IPA itself also tastes like "turd sauce in a bottle."

which leads us to believe that "turd sauce in a bottle" must be pretty effin' tasty

 

[jevidl]

I can think of several reasons.

1.) Maybe the beer isn't available in your region. For example, I'm in Canada. I recently had an opportunity to taste my first DFH 60 Minute IPA. It was delicious. I want more. But I'm in Canada and it's not available up here. So I found a "clone" recipe and made my own.

2.) Maybe the beer is no longer available anywhere. Maybe the brewery that made your favorite beer got bought out by AB-InBev and they've butchered the recipe to make it more appealing to the masses. Maybe your favorite brewery just plain went bankrupt and closed up shop.

3.) Maybe it's a seasonal beer that's only available certain times of the year.

4.) Maybe the brewery changed their recipe. One of my favorite beers was from a local brewery, but every few months, they change the hops they use to brew it. I loved it when they made it with Zythos hops, but their current batch uses Summit, which I'm not a fan of. So they shared the recipe with me, and I made it myself, using the Zythos hops I prefer.

5.) Cost. Note that this is near the bottom of my list, but for some penny-pinchers, it's a real factor for them. They can make an almost identical beer for less cost than buying it. Especially up here, north of the border, where a 6-pack of decent craft beer will run you $15.

6.) The challenge. It can be fun to see how closely we can duplicate our favorite beers, and you can learn a lot in the process of trying.

There's 6 good reasons right there.

All of these reasons resonate with me, especially number one. A friend of mine lived in Wisconsin and I was introduced to New Glarus brewery. I am a huge fan of Moon Man and their Black Top IPA. For me it involves traveling three states to get their craft because they don't distribute beyond WI, and have stated on their website that they have no desire to distribute past WI. If I want New Glarus, I must travel or clone my own. Within hours I was trying to find a recipe.

Since then, my desire to clone it has faded somewhat, partly because of the difficulty in finding anything about the actual hop blend they're using and my own misgivings that it'll even be possible for me to source the ingredients or get it right. Pliny the Elder is another one that sounds very tasty, and I'd be happy to brew a clone - knowing full well it's not the beer that is sold commercially for something close.

This discussion about clones brings to mind an article I recently read about folks who try to recreate movie props, in this particular example, Han's DL-44 blaster. Similar to brewing, it's very difficult if not impossible to precisely clone the prop. Instead of malt, mashing, yeast, and process differences they are faced with the challenge of inadequate source material and a virtually infinite number of parts to draw from to try to get it just so. But they really don't want the prop to be a perfect replica - stage props are imperfect and often incomplete because it only has to look correct in context of the shot. They don't make perfectly detailed stage props because they'll be thrown around, dropped, broken, and generally take abuse. These props will even vary between movies in a series, or for different shots. The most accurate props are used for publicity shots and even then they will vary between individual units. What a replica builder is really trying to recreate is what they think the prop looked like. What their imagination built for them as they watched the movie. What their imagination built is probably better than the actual prop recorded on film.

While the replica creators goals may change as we move into 1080 and 4k movies, for me cloning resembles making prop replicas (especially of older films). I'm not so much interested in cloning exactly what the brewery released as I am in recreating what I remember drinking. I suspect my memory of that first Moon Man is better than what was actually in that bottle.

 

[BrewKnurd]

which leads us to believe that "turd sauce in a bottle" must be pretty effin' tasty

All I can say is that I have no evidence to the contrary.