When I first began homebrewing, I was puzzled as to why so many hobby brewers attempted to replicate their favorite commercial beers at home. Why on earth would you spend all of that time and effort to create something that you could just pick up at the store? If you like to drink Stone/Arrogant Brewing's Arrogant Bastard, then why not just buy Arrogant Bastard? Why not be creative and create something new?
Well, I’m older and wiser now, and I’ve come to understand that there are some very good reasons to try cloning a commercial product.
- Cloning forces you to improve your sensory skills.
- Cloning offers a chance to learn from the pros.
- Cloning lets you create your own particular interpretations of elusive beers that may or may not enjoy distribution in your area.
Let’s be clear: It’s next to impossible to really, truly clone a commercial beer, even if you have the recipe right under your nose. Differences in equipment, volumes, process, timing, water composition, and other variables mean that the beer you brew at home, while possibly very good, is unlikely to be a carbon copy of the original.
But that’s not the point. Attempting to copy a commercial beer is an excellent way to fine-tune your skills as a brewer. It’s a bit like learning to paint by copying the masters. The goal isn’t so much to replace the original as it is to practice and improve your technique.
If you’ve never tried your hand at a clone before, here are a few things to help you in your practice.
Start with Something You Know
Starting with a known recipe (or at least partial recipe) for a commercial beer gets you started without all of that pesky shooting around in the dark, and several breweries make their recipes available to homebrewers. Deschutes Brewery gives away the names of the ingredients it uses but leaves the quantities, temperatures, and timing as an exercise for the reader. Avery Brewing even provides exact quantities for 5-gallon batches of its IPA, White Rascal, Reverend, Czar, and other favorites. And many of the brewers featured in the Breakout Brewer profiles or other articles in Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine® share recipes with us. Check out Perennial Artisan Ales' recipe for Hommel Bier or Funkwerks Tropic King Imperial Saison or Lawson’s Double Sunshine.
Brewers tend to be a generous lot. Even if you can’t get exact quantities and timings, chances are an email to your favorite brewery will at least get you some hints.
One of the most widely attempted clones out there must be Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, and there are at least three very good reasons why this is so.
- Pliny the Elder consistently ranks near to top of best beer lists far and wide.
- Russian River has limited distribution (mostly California, Oregon, Colorado, and Pennsylvania), so its availability is limited.
- Perhaps most critically, brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo has famously shared the recipe.
Now, Pliny the Elder, as Russian River brews it, has most certainly changed many times since Vinnie’s original recipe found its way into the hands of thirsty homebrewers. But that’s fine. Brewed according to Vinnie’s directions, you’ll turn out an excellent double IPA. It won’t taste like what you buy in Santa Rosa, but that’s where tasting comes in.
Use Your Senses
Evaluating your clone attempt side-by-side with the real thing gives you some insight into how you might change your recipe to more faithfully approximate the original. Consider using a BJCP score sheet from the Beer Judge Certification Program to write down your impressions of each sample using sensory criteria.
- Appearance: How closely does your beer match the color and hue of the original? If your beer is lighter, you may need to add crystal malts or color malts. How about clarity?
- Aroma: What do you smell? Look for contributions from malt, hops, esters, phenols, and alcohols. If you’re trying to replicate an IPA, how well does your hops aroma match the original? For a barleywine, does the alcoholic warmth on the nose have the same quality?
- Flavor: What do you pick up? If you’re trying to clone a lager, does your example demonstrate the same kind of clean malt and hops flavor as the original, or does yours exhibit some esters? Does the malt profile seem similar? What about sweet malt vs. dry malt?
- Mouthfeel: How do the two samples feel on your tongue? If one is spritzy and the other creamy, the interplay of carbonation and malt proteins may be different. Does one feel heavier or more viscous than the other?
Use your sensory analysis to inform how you might change your recipe to more accurately replicate the original. You’re not judging for a competition, so use language that makes sense to you.
Brew It Again
Practice, as always, makes perfect. Use the results of your taste tests to decide how you need to change your recipe. If you nail the flavor and aroma but miss the mark on color, a small amount of roasted barley can darken your recipe without significantly changing the flavor. If, however, more malt sweetness is needed, adding a bit of crystal malt will deliver both flavor and color. If your homebrew has less of a pine-like hops aroma than the beer you wish to clone, research the hops you used and learn which varieties tend to deliver more pine.
Finally, remember that you are attempting to copy a moving target. Variations in malts, hops, and even equipment from one year to another mean that two instances of the same commercial beer may taste subtly, but identifiably, different. Brewers attempt to minimize inconsistency by contracting hops well in advance and by blending multiple batches to iron out the differences. But it’s inevitable that variations will occur.
In the end, if you create a beer that you and your friends truly enjoy, then you’ll have succeeded even if you don’t create a carbon copy of the original. And isn’t that really what the hobby is all about?