Recipe Credits on Labels?

[kad2371]

Just wondering if anyone credits the original recipe creator on labels, and if so, how? Assuming you were bottling a batch of Cream of Three Crops as an example, would you in some fashion indicate that Biermuncher designed the recipe?

Just curious what most of you do, if it isn't your recipe.

 

[opiate82]

It is an interesting question. When developing a recipe I will generally start with a tried and true recipe and tweak from there. For example, I basically use BM's Centennial Blonde recipe but have tweaked it up to 5% ABV and I do a .5oz addition of Calypso at the end. Should I be crediting BM for that? I'm not sure. Also for my house pale ale I use the Red Chair Clone grain bill almost exactly, but a completely different hop schedule.

At the end of the day many recipes for certain styles look very very similar even if they may or may not have been influenced by another recipe. Does a top chef give credit to wherever he received his culinary training for any recipes he may have brought with him from that experience?

All that aside I've put notes that just generically say "Special thanks to HBT for all the wisdom, experience and advice I utilized to create this beer" on labels before.

 

[kad2371]

Does a top chef give credit to wherever he received his culinary training for any recipes he may have brought with him from that experience?

An interesting question, but in this case it would be more like a novice chef making a top chef's dish exactly as originally designed, and calling it by the same name as the top chef.

I do like the idea of giving credit to HBT in general though.

 

[WayFrae]

I don't feel like it is necessary to credit the original recipe. To go along with the cooking analogy: When I cook a meal using a recipe I got on some random website and my friends/family compliment the cooking. I don't say "Thanks, but it wasn't my recipe... I just got it from blahblahblah.com." Just because you followed a recipe doesn't make the end product any less yours. If they ask where you got the recipe, tell them. Otherwise it seems funny to me to downplay your skill at brewing just because you didn't formulate the recipe.

 

[jbaysurfer]

Recipe propriety is something that bothers me. Some brewers are very secretive about their recipes, but I go the other way with it. I won a Pro-Am last year and the prize was a chance to brew it and have it on tap at the Brewpub, with a chance to go to GABF in the Pro-Am category. My friend who is a Chef asked me what I was doing to protect my recipe. My response?

"I got my recipe from a book called brewing classic styles. I tweaked it a bit so it's a little different, but it's largely inspired by Jamil. Brewing is about process far more then recipe formulation IMHO. Recipe formulation is over rated. Get a copy of Designing Great Beer and you can pretty much formulate a classic recipe of any beer style. But can you make it?

That's the question.

No offense to Biermuncher or any of the greats who have contributed to the recipe database...but I'd be surprised if they didn't feel the same way. It's not about the recipe, it's about the process.

Also, as an aside, I had a chance to go to a Heretic Dinner that Jamil hosted a few months ago. I very eagerly told him my story, and we cheers'd over it. He was very proud to know his recipe had been the inspiration for my award winning beer. So if I see Biermuncher, for sure I'm buying him a beer over that great Cent Blonde I brewed last summer.

 

[opiate82]

An interesting question, but in this case it would be more like a novice chef making a top chef's dish exactly as originally designed, and calling it by the same name as the top chef.

I was thinking of something more along the lines of like lets say creme brulee. You are in culinary school, or are a sous chef and are taught how to make creme brulee. Now you go to open your own restaurant and you plan to serve creme brulee. Are you suppose to forget how you were taught to make it and develop your own recipe? Are you suppose to credit the previous executive chef you worked under for the creme brulee recipe?

Then again, I see where you are coming from as well. You work under an executive chef that has some signature dish and you take that recipe verbatim when you open your own place, you could say you are taking his intellectual property.

Like I said, it is an interesting conundrum.

 

[bzwyatt]

I enjoy beer in a very similar way to how I enjoy music, and I recently realized music and beer have something in common.

I can find music by Chopin or Mozart or Joplin, written by them. I can learn to play it just the way they wrote it down. I can go to a performance by AC/DC and if I listen enough times, I could write down every part of the music that they play. I could search the web and somebody has already done it for me.

But if I got on a stage and started playing their music, would anybody think I was AC/DC or Chopin or Mozart? Does anybody like cover bands as much as they like the original? Do bands have to credit and pay royalties when they cover a song by another artist?

In brewing I guess 'process' is the way to describe what it is that a brewer has that nobody else has. I don't know what it is in music, but there is only one AC/DC. They put their music out for everybody to enjoy and partake of, and people can and do try to copy it all the time. But there is still only one AC/DC.

 

[NTexBrewer]

I have no problem giving credit to the original recipe developer. Part of it is just not being able to come up with an original name.

As others have said you will find that you will find a recipe and then start tweaking it until it will be the same style but will be different from the original recipe. This has happened with a lot of my recipes as I went from Extract to Partial Mash to All Grain BIAB.

I use Brewer's Friend recipe developer and they have a spot where you can put the author of the recipe. I like to put the author here so if I want to go back and check on the original recipe I know who developed it.

 

[Teromous]

It sounds like a solution without a problem. I've never seen a recipe creator get angry about their recipe being used without being given credit and I've never had a person directly ask me who the creator of a recipe was. The only time it might come up is if I am trying to tell a person where they can find the recipe...like "Yeah it's that Northern Brewer kit" or "It's Denny's recipe _____ " then they can go find it. Sometimes a person might ask if I made the recipe and if I didn't, I just say "no it was from ____ " and usually by the second or third word they've lost interest anyway, mostly because they have no idea who the hell I'm talking about. Maybe I should find more homebrewers to hang out with, but the people I share beer with are usually more interested in drinking it than its history, unless it has some "real" history behind it and I can tell them about Orval or Pierre Celis. That conversation doesn't usually last that long either, but it's better than rambling about some author of a book or famous homebrewer. In general I think that putting stuff like that on a label just clutters it up. I'm not a fan of QR codes but that's always an alternative. I've read of homebrewers putting recipes and stuff in QR codes...I guess you could give credit or a recipe website that way.