Why the obsession with cloning?

[5mooth0perator]

There is just so much territory outside of what is commercially viable from ingedients to cultures to degrees of freshness. Even starting out I didn't want to clone a commercial.

 

[Stillraining]

Making good beer is easy..Cloning a good beer is not.

Buy a Fender Stratacaster , a few peddles, and a Marshall Amp and it pretty easy to make some good sounds .............now see how long it takes you to sound like David Gilmour.

 

[mtnagel]

I probably read it here

I was thinking about buying cans of extract and stuffing it into dissolvable gel capsules. They make some pretty large ones that would would work well (the "000" size, below, are an inch long and hold 1.4ml). Fill them, freeze, to use just toss in the boil. No mess! All this stuff is available on Amazon.

A filling tray, like below, makes filling them 50 at-a-time a breeze. Maybe.

Let me know how the capsules work out! I think you may be underestimating how sticky this stuff actually it is, and how difficult it is to work with, but capsules would be great! ~15IBU per hop pill for 5 gallons.

Out of the 100g Yakima valley can, I was able to get fourteen 10ml syringes filled, with another 7ml in another syringe.

PS. Whatever you do, do not taste this stuff.

Yeah pretty much this. That won't be easy. In order to make the stuff flowable, I heated it up in a water bath. It might be warm enough that it would dissolve the capsules. You can buy syringes on Amazon and just freeze the syringes. The graduations on the syringes makes it very easy to dose what you need for your batch.

 

[passedpawn]

Yeah pretty much this. That won't be easy. In order to make the stuff flowable, I heated it up in a water bath. It might be warm enough that it would dissolve the capsules. You can buy syringes on Amazon and just freeze the syringes. The graduations on the syringes makes it very easy to dose what you need for your batch.

I've used extract, I know what it is. I'm really worried about the capsules dissolving, so I'm not going to heat the extract. I'm going to attempt to shoot it into the capsules using a icing gun, like in the picture below. We have a similar one. Yes, it will probably be a disaster, but we'll see. Once filled, I'm just putting them all into the freezer with other hops and on brew day I'll just toss what I need into the boil.

 

[kigerbrewing]

I've used extract, I know what it is. I'm really worried about the capsules dissolving, so I'm not going to heat the extract. I'm going to attempt to shoot it into the capsules using a icing gun, like in the picture below. We have a similar one. Yes, it will probably be a disaster, but we'll see. Once filled, I'm just putting them all into the freezer with other hops and on brew day I'll just toss what I need into the boil.

Did you ever try this and how did it turn out?

 

[passedpawn]

Did you ever try this and how did it turn out?

Nope. I still want to.

 

[MHBT]

I only try and clone beers that i love and cannot get on a regular basis..But i think creating your own recipe is the most rewarding.

 

[mattdee1]

I usually assume that if I find a clone recipe of a certain beer, it is just a "best guess" developed by a fellow homebrewer who also likes that beer. So, considering the fact that the recipe is not exact, coupled with all of the other process variables that may affect the outcome, the likelihood is pretty low that the beer will actually taste like a bona fide "copy" of the original.

And that's just fine with me. What I do end up with is a beer that is probably pretty good, in the same vein as the original, yet something that I can say I made myself. From there, I may choose to alter some aspects of the recipe and make it more my own. I guess what I'm saying is, the real value of clone recipes for me is that they provide a reference point of roughly what the result will be like, without having to go through the 7-8 hour process and weeks of waiting to try a sample.

Another thing is, sometimes I don't want to outright copy a certain commercial beer, but rather, I want to extract a certain trait from it (aroma, flavor note, etc.). A good clone recipe can help pull back the curtain so I can get an idea of how to achieve a certain desirable trait in a beer of my own, with less trial and error.

 

[beernutz]

I don't do it on a regular basis but when I started back brewing after a multi-year layoff I brewed many of the recipes in the CloneBrews recipe book. It helped me at the time to have a goal of a specific taste / aroma profile I wanted to achieve which I could compare side-by-side with a commercial example.

Recently I brewed a Pliney the Elder clone using Vinnie's recipe because I'd only had it once many years ago when we stopped at Russian River and I had a craving. It was a fun exercise and the beer turned out pretty good but I don't think I'll ever do it again.

 

[MHBT]

I usually assume that if I find a clone recipe of a certain beer, it is just a "best guess" developed by a fellow homebrewer who also likes that beer. So, considering the fact that the recipe is not exact, coupled with all of the other process variables that may affect the outcome, the likelihood is pretty low that the beer will actually taste like a bona fide "copy" of the original.

And that's just fine with me. What I do end up with is a beer that is probably pretty good, in the same vein as the original, yet something that I can say I made myself. From there, I may choose to alter some aspects of the recipe and make it more my own. I guess what I'm saying is, the real value of clone recipes for me is that they provide a reference point of roughly what the result will be like, without having to go through the 7-8 hour process and weeks of waiting to try a sample.

Another thing is, sometimes I don't want to outright copy a certain commercial beer, but rather, I want to extract a certain trait from it (aroma, flavor note, etc.). A good clone recipe can help pull back the curtain so I can get an idea of how to achieve a certain desirable trait in a beer of my own, with less trial and error.

I pegged two hearted ale and i dont think most people would be able to tell the difference between mine and bells

 

[allanmorgan]

I pegged two hearted ale and i dont think most people would be able to tell the difference between mine and bells

Recipe?

 

[MHBT]

Recipe?

Very simple recipe
12lbs rahr 2 row
.5 lbs caramel 40
1oz centennial 60 mins
1oz centenial 20 mins
2oz centennial flame out
1oz centennial dry hop 7 days
1056,us05,wlp001

this is 82% BHE

i also use distilled water and i dont have my notebook on hand to tell you exactly how much salts but i use the pale ale profile on brun water

 

[allanmorgan]

Thanks @MattyHBT ! Red's RyePA was one of my go to's before Founders, you know...

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I've only brewed one recipe that wasn't mine in one way or another. It was a Fort Point recipe and I was disappointed with the results. Not that it wasn't a close clone (I've had Fort Point, but didn't really drink it with a comparison in mind), but it just wasn't as good as the NEIPAs I'd been brewing with my own recipes.

I sometimes search for clone recipes to try to learn how to achieve certain results (thick mouthfeel with a stout, for example), but in general I'm not all that interested in reproducing specific beers. I'd really like to be able to reproduce the base beer for the Prairie Artisan Noir series of beers as I think it's a great base for doing my own pseudo BA tweaks.

I'm more interested in reproducing styles with my own twist.

 

[applescrap]

I personally try to use the best and most famous recipes that I can find. That being said I fully understand that creating recipes is one of the most joyful things that brewers do, and I think thats cool too. My friend does. I would start with a recipe or the bjcp style guidelines and work out from there. There are so many awesome ingredients and I have tried almost every grain in every store I shop at including black patent and I have tasted a lot of stuff that would be fun to put to work. For example, that canadian honey malt is awesome. Maybe I will take my own advice at some point and find a recipe to work out from. The beers I make from scratch have been disappointing and that has never happened with a recipe so my talent for this is low. Check out mike tonsemeier the mad fermentationist for awesone ideas and discussions on creative beer making.