Why the obsession with cloning?

[jbob7171]

I'm making a guess that I was like most people when I first started brewing... I wanted to make a replica of a commercial beer that I liked. As I've continued with my brewing hobby, I've noticed that I've gotten away from trying to clone beers and steered more towards creating my own recipes (as much as I can). I find much more joy in that. For one, I don't have the disappointment that my "clone" doesn't taste like the real deal. They mostly never do, just too many variables to consider. And second, it's something I've created, which is just, well... pretty cool.

So I was curious about other homebrewers... what are ya'lls thoughts on the obsession to replicate a beer. Is it good practice? A waste of time? etc, etc.

disclaimer: I have no problems with cloning beers, as I mentioned, I started out that way, and sometimes still try to.

 

[TheCADJockey]

Hey man.. any practice is good practice. I've never tried to clone anything; I just don't want that kind of pressure and inevitable disappointment when it doesn't taste like the original. Maybe some day I will make an attempt to clone something, but at this point there are just too many styles I would like to try to make first.

 

[TheHappyHopper]

For me anyways, I like the idea of brewing clone recipes because I know it will get me a good example of a beer style that I like and from there I can go on to tweak it more to my preferences. For example, there are a lot of IPAs that I don't care for, but there are certain ones that I like, so I might start by brewing a clone of that recipe and then tweak it from there as I see fit.

A lot of times on clone recipes I see people mentioning that they are trying to brew it for friends/family that really like that beer. Or if it is for a very expensive beer, it makes sense if you are just trying to save money.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

The idea of cloning appeals to me only in the sense of hard to get, or discontinued beers. Beyond that, I suppose it is a nice challenge to ones skill.

 

[drainbamage]

I'm not that big into cloning, but I can see the popularity for a couple reasons:

Some beers (Heady, Zombie Dust, KBS) are extremely hard to track down for most people. With a reliable clone recipe, we can have some of the rarest beers in the country, anywhere, anytime.

Creating a clone recipe can give you a really good appreciation for all those little factors you mentioned that go into making a beer. Even a few small tweaks can make the difference between "close, but no cigar" and "nailed it". Sometimes with trial and error, you can even find a variation that you like more than the real thing.

 

[bobeer]

I'm also not really into cloning. I've done a few that I can't get where I live but I have no idea what the real thing tastes like. They have a turned out well and were all very tasty. Sometimes I'll use part of the grist from a commercial beer to get me started on a different beer to brew of my own.
I agree that any practice is a good thing and when you have something to compare it to you can gain a little more than just brewing a beer that's good to you. In the end though I don't think it really matters if a person digs brewing clones or original recipes. As long as you're having fun you're doing it right.

 

[hopjunkie26]

Biggest reason for me is the beers that I just can't seem to get my hands on. I have no idea how close they are to the originals, but they usually end up being pretty good beers.

 

[jbob7171]

For me anyways, I like the idea of brewing clone recipes because I know it will get me a good example of a beer style that I like and from there I can go on to tweak it more to my preferences.

IMO, I see this as the best reason to clone... i.e. to get you closer to a particular style you like, as opposed to a specific beer. Then, you can make it your own with the tweaks you mention.

 

[kanzimonson]

I have a question for the OP: how long have you been brewing? Because I've gone in and out of cloning. I definitely understand the enjoyment of creating something yourself, and I've made several tasty beers like this. But then I'll brew an exact recipe out of Brewing Classic Styles and it comes out just that extra little bit better. It makes me realize how much there always is to learn about brewing.

I think a lot of people will respond "because it's great to calibrate your process" but one of the best things I get out of clone recipes is challenging my own assumptions about the way something should be done.

 

[blackbeer]

cloning will help you create your own recipes for the distinctive brews. i used to think i could never make a beer as good as the craft brewers. now, for the most part, i make better beers than a heck of a lot i've paid $35+/case for. the stout i just tapped yesterday could easily sell for $45/case or $4/pint without a doubt. the one difference i note is that my bottle conditioned beers get better with age whereas the commercial stuff seems to be better young and then begins to degrade.

 

[Barley_Bob]

I've never cloned anything, and I have zero desire to try it. But I love that other people clone, because those recipes and practices are an amazing resource I use to make my own recipes. When I find a commercial beer I like, I almost always turn around and look for someone's clone so I can pick out the elements I liked and incorporate them.

 

[jbob7171]

I have a question for the OP: how long have you been brewing? Because I've gone in and out of cloning. I definitely understand the enjoyment of creating something yourself, and I've made several tasty beers like this. But then I'll brew an exact recipe out of Brewing Classic Styles and it comes out just that extra little bit better. It makes me realize how much there always is to learn about brewing.

I think a lot of people will respond "because it's great to calibrate your process" but one of the best things I get out of clone recipes is challenging my own assumptions about the way something should be done.

Only been brewing 2 years and I've done about 30 batches. Without a doubt, there's always stuff to learn. That process never stops. I guess I like to learn by trying out different things by researching styles and seeing what does and does not work. As I mentioned in my original post, sometimes I do still clone, but it's more to get a style as opposed to a specific beer. And I think you sort of allude to that in your post by brewing a recipe out of brewing classic styles. I don't have that book... is it clones of specific commercial beers or just tried and true recipes to style?

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

If the mountain is there, I must climb it.

I guess for me it is, I taste a beer and think "I like this a lot, but I wish it was a tiny bit more/less hoppy/dry/sweet/thick/aromatic, or I wish it had some raspberries in it instead of cherries". Not trying to make it better, or so I have the beer in my basement all the time (though for seasonal brews theres stuff I wish wasn't seasonal so I could drink it all the time so time to clone brew), theres just very often a beer I really really like but wish it was just tweaked a tiny bit in one direction or another. So clone the beer and see if I nail it spot on, nailed it, then next batch tweek the numbers or timings a little or yeast or some other random variable.

 

[joshesmusica]

i'm still fairly new as a brewer, so i don't know exactly how each type of grain and hop plays into each different flavor (although i will soon be starting to do small batch experiments to figure this stuff out). that said, i also realize that to brew an exact clone is nearly futile. so i use clone recipes as a way to lead me in the direction i want to go. then, like already mentioned, i tweak that recipe in order to fit my preferences.

 

[Zekk]

I like to do a clone recipe sometimes. The beers are usually seasonal and I like having 40+ of them in my cabinet. I guess it's also a good measure if your clone is as good if not better than the original.

Side note: I'm planning to brew either a ruthless rye or grapefruit sculpin next week

 

[aprichman]

I brewed my first "clone" this weekend - a Sticky Hands IIPA. Sticky Hands is a monthly release and changes quite a bit from recipe to recipe.

Block 15 released what types of grains they use but not %. They also released a big list of hops that they liked to use but no hop schedule. I was able to get access to the hop oil they use in Sticky Hands as well as a their in house yeast.

It's been fermenting for ~4 days now and it looks amazing and smells even better.

I usually don't brew "big" beers or clones but I'm glad I did because it pushed me to try new things like a hop stand and dry hopping.

 

[mtnagel]

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed by it. For me, it's not so much making an exact replica of a beer. It's just using a recipe that is tested and lots of people say it's good, so I'm pretty sure it's going to make a good beer.

Even though I've been brewing for almost 4 years, I don't feel super confident with many of the ingredients and their flavor profile. I've brewed enough pale ales and IPAs that I'm sure I could put together a decent one from scratch, but I don't know what hops go well with others, so that's why I like to find well liked clone recipes for beers I like and brew those.

 

[Psylocide]

Because one day, we could harvest organs from a perfect genetic match.

 

[TheCADJockey]

If we cloned enough @psylocide 's we could potentially rid the planet of Busch Light. Of course the down side is obviously, after that... what do you do with so many of them running around? I assume some sort of fight club but that is another topic altogether.

 

[1977Brewer]

If we cloned enough @psylocide 's we could potentially rid the planet of Busch Light. Of course the down side is obviously, after that... what do you do with so many of them running around? I assume some sort of fight club but that is another topic altogether.

Some sort of clone army of home brewing light beer swilling hippies.

The horror.

 

[TheCADJockey]

Some sort of clone army of home brewing light beer swilling hippies.

The horror.

Shhh... she might hear you.

 

[giraffe]

I generally dont clone, but occasionally I have a commercial beer, and I am blown away in the "how did they do that?" sense (recently dekoninck, and weltenburger asam bock). And then Ill research what info is out there, and make a few batches to try to replicate it for learning experience. Also, when brewing a style I havent brewed in a long time, sometimes ill start by trying to clone my favorite example of the style as a starting point.

 

[loeks]

Just like a lot of previous comments here I have cloned something that isn't available in my area. The only clone I have done was Schlafly Pale Ale. It was one of the first beers I ever had when I was under age and visiting my older brother in St. Louis and all I remembered about it was that I loved it. So I decided to try to clone it for my second brew ever. My brother brought a six pack of the real stuff to compare when he visited Michigan from St. Louis, and my clone somehow ended up being almost perfect.

 

[Teromous]

I'm making a guess that I was like most people when I first started brewing... I wanted to make a replica of a commercial beer that I liked. As I've continued with my brewing hobby, I've noticed that I've gotten away from trying to clone beers and steered more towards creating my own recipes (as much as I can). I find much more joy in that. For one, I don't have the disappointment that my "clone" doesn't taste like the real deal. They mostly never do, just too many variables to consider. And second, it's something I've created, which is just, well... pretty cool.

So I was curious about other homebrewers... what are ya'lls thoughts on the obsession to replicate a beer. Is it good practice? A waste of time? etc, etc.

disclaimer: I have no problems with cloning beers, as I mentioned, I started out that way, and sometimes still try to.

Popular commercial beers are usually popular because people like them for one reason or another. For some people cloning a popular beer is about challenging their skill and to others it's about the taste. If you like the way a popular beer tastes, odds are that even if you aren't 100% successful you will at least have a palate of flavors that you liked from the commercial beer. An attempted clone of a Simcoe heavy DIPA is still going to taste like a Simcoe DIPA even if you screw the mash up and give it too much body or let it ferment too high. In the end you get close to the hop flavor you want.

I understand that some people like the recognition of creating a unique recipe and that some people just want to be creative, but most of the time I don't see the need to reinvent the wheel. If I drink Fuller's London Porter and enjoy it, why wouldn't I want to clone it? Additionally I have yet to run out of beers that I want to clone.

I also want to be clear that I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from being creative (not like an internet post should have the power to do that anyway) but realistically the end goal for me is to make good beer. If I'm making good beer then I don't care if it comes from a book, forum, kit, or my brain.

Another benefit to cloning or near-cloning is that it's easy to relay information to people. If you drink IPA's all the time and I recommend some random porter recipe I found online, you would just have to guess or take my word for how it tastes. If I told you Fuller's London Porter, you could go out and buy it to get an idea of how it tastes. Maybe it turns out you hate it (and give me the rest of the six pack) and you've saved yourself a five gallon batch of something you don't want.

 

[GarageDweller]

Its always a starting point for recipe building and gaining an understanding of how different malts relate to the final product. You also learn how professional breweries use certain techniques to obtain particular flavors in a specific product. Techniques like hop stands and multiple stage dry-hopping comes to mind. You get to sample the final product and make comparison's against the target product. Evaluate, then rebrew, see how the changes in certain processes or ingredients affect the final product, Evaluate, then rebrew. Its all linear and progressive.

 

[Sailingeric]

I have done one close, Pyramid Brewing's Lord Alesworth. It is $8 a 22oz bottle in the store and they have all the important info on the bottle so I thought I would try it to see if I can make a copy. I think mine turned out about 95% of the original and I am very happy with it and for $35 in ingredients I saved about $165 versus buying 25 bottles of the beer in the store.

 

[user 198378]

What's wrong with cloning? I'm sure there are lots of great homebrew recipes out there that started as a clone. If they're selling it commercially and it's been around for a while, there has to be something right going on.

I go in and out of cloning recipes and I've learned a lot in the process. I tried cloning Ballast Point Sculpin and the result I got didn't come close to the grapefruityness of the original. Did I go crazy trying to hunt down that exact taste? No - I made a mental note of what I'd do differently moving forward and take that into consideration the next time I brew an IPA.

On the other side, I've brewed Da Yooper's Pale Ale recipe 4 times now and have honed in that I love Citra and am now trying out a Citra/Mosaic (dryhop) combo on it...and since then I've seen some clone recipes that look similar. So it goes both ways.

Btw...Da Yooper's recipe was an attempt at a clone

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

I have done one close, Pyramid Brewing's Lord Alesworth. It is $8 a 22oz bottle in the store and they have all the important info on the bottle so I thought I would try it to see if I can make a copy. I think mine turned out about 95% of the original and I am very happy with and for $35 in ingredients I saved about $165 versus buying 25 bottles of the beer in the store.

Similar experience with brewing a Hopslap clone. Cost me, I think, 60$ for the ingredients and I end up with 45-50 bottles. Buying 50 bottles of Hopslam in the store costs upwards of 200 dollars.

 

[Barley_Bob]

I should amend my answer. I haven't cloned anything and am not attracted to it, but I did write clone recipes for Westmalle's Dubbel and Tripel that a friend wants to make. He's lived in Europe on and off and wants to be able to drink the beers he loves fresh in the USA, and I'm doing it for him. Anyway, I did think creativity was only to be found in writing original recipes, but oh! was I ever wrong. There are like 12 gazillion recipes for Westmalle's beers, and it was actually a lot of work writing a clone recipe that I thought incorporated the style and methods of all the recipes and descriptions out there while also modifying them to my system. Obviously, I have no idea how good a job I did (yet), but you're not going to catch me knocking folks who do clones.

 

[fimpster]

I've got a DFH60 clone fermenting away. Why? Because DFH doesn't distribute here and it's been a while since I've had one.

 

[brick_haus]

I "clone" PTE on a regular basis. I started doing it because I liked the original.
If you can get the charactoristics of the original in your brew, then your process is solid.
I continued it because, through evolution, I have been able to consistantly produce a really good IIPA that a lot of my friends like. I try to give away as much of my beer as I can so I get to brew more often!

 

[cyberbrew]

To date I haven't cloned anything, but I like to read through the clones of the commercial beers that I buy. It definitely helps point me in the right direction for what ingredients add the various flavors that I'm looking for when I'm working on my own homebrews.

 

[te-wa]

i like to clone beers that are seasonal - and i can enjoy them all year. i've brewed a Red Chair a few times now. just a solid beer that deschutes should offer perennially.

 

[madscientist451]

My cloned beers have been some of the best beers I've made, while my own recipes haven't been that great. Unless you are really good at designing recipes, a new beer is going to be a trial and error thing and its going to take several re-brews to get it right.
Many of the clone recipes available have already been through several revisions. Sometimes I'll alter the hops or malt bill, but I still usually get an outstanding beer.
Sometimes my cloned beers are better than the commercial version.
I don't know why except maybe that its fresher but another reason is like comparing well made home baked bread to to "artisan" breads that are put out by your local mega-supermarket. I like my cloned beers and will keep drinking them but will also still do new recipes and experiment with altering existing recipes.

 

[Brewtah]

In my opinion it is "harder" to try and produce a clone. When tasting your own recipie there is nothing to compare it with. If there is not a lot of info on the beer you are cloning, you better have a sense of what you are tasting. It is challenging to duplicate a beer by just tasting it.
I have emailed brewery's for ideas on making their beer. For the most part they are helpful when it comes to hops, yeast, etc.
I usually create recipies inspired by beers I like. I have brewed a couple of clones from BYO magazine and they have been good.

 

[TallDan]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that we often want a known good recipe for a certain style. An experienced brewer can look at some recipes and know some things that they like and don't like, but a new brewer can't figure any of that out by looking at the recipe. So, it's easier to pick a recipe that is a clone of a commercial beer that you know you like. As a new brewer, I had no idea what Brewer's Best American Pale Ale should taste like, but I did know what Sierra Nevada Pale Ale should taste like.

 

[Ebtide]

I think it is a way to calibrate your talent, equipment but once I tried a couple times I was ready to move on. The brews were very close and then I move to adjusting recipes. Always wanting to change one variable to see if that improved it to palate.

 

[Rock_Toy]

I agree with a lot of people on here. I typically clone as a starting point for a beer that I want to tweak and make my own. 2 of my favorite homebrews started out as clones a few generations ago and have developed into their own beers. About to do the same with a Pliny recipe I found online. I KNOW that its a good base....and I'll just mess with it until its my own.

 

[brick_haus]

I agree with a lot of people on here. I typically clone as a starting point for a beer that I want to tweak and make my own. 2 of my favorite homebrews started out as clones a few generations ago and have developed into their own beers. About to do the same with a Pliny recipe I found online. I KNOW that its a good base....and I'll just mess with it until its my own.

Good point, but I may add that it's "your own" as soon as YOU brew it!

 

[Braufessor]

I have actually gotten MORE into "cloning" beer over the last couple years...... and it has been close to 20 years since I started.

My desire is simple - I want to brew the best possible beer I can brew. I think it is crazy to think that I am going to basically brew a "great" example of a particular type of beer on a random recipe I make up. However, if I can replicate an example I personally love..... and then go on to tweak it a bit in ways that further appeal to me...... well, then, I can have a truly great beer I can brew for myself and my friends.

I guess (for me) it comes down to this - if you cannot brew a great beer that already exists, and if you cannot brew it consistently......... the odds of you sort of randomly brewing a phenomenal beer on your own, and repeating it...... well, the odds seem long.

I use clones as a spring board to a great beer to suit my personal tastes.