Most home brewers like to experiment with recipes, trying to get a brew just right. Often the standard to which we strive is that of commercially brewed beers. When we taste a really great beer we think, “I wonder if I could brew this?” But how do you go about copying, or cloning, a commercial beer?

The first step is determining the ingredients. Often brewers will tell you the grains, hops, spices, etc. right on the bottle. If the ingredients aren’t on the bottle, check the brewer’s website, which will often have a great deal of technical information about their beers including IBU’s (International Bitterness Units), color, yeast and more. If you can’t find the ingredients, try contacting the brewer directly. Chances are, they will be happy to tell you what goes into their beer.

Why would a brewer share their secret recipe with a home brewer? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery but there are other reasons. The brewing community is very open. When you are a brewer, whether it is at home or in a brewery, you are part of a sort of informal brotherhood (not to exclude the many fine female brewers out there), and brewers love to share not only their brews but their techniques. Also, there are no copyrights, that I know of, on beer recipes probably because beer has four primary ingredients: malted barley, yeast, hops, and water. The wonderfully infinite variety in beer comes from the subtle interactions of these simple ingredients. Even if you use the same ingredients, in the same ratio as a commercial beer, you are very unlikely to produce exactly the same result.

There are two reasons for this: water and scale. Water is the largest ingredient by volume in any beer and the content of the water varies greatly by source. The chemical and mineral make-up of water can vary not only from town to town but tap to tap and plays a huge part in how a beer tastes. When it comes to scale, commercial brewers typically make large batches that produce hundreds of gallons of beer. As you scale a recipe down to a typical 5 gallon home brew batch, the ingredient amounts become so small that a slight variation can make a huge difference.

Another reason it can be hard to clone a commercial beer is yeast. Brewers often develop their own strains of yeast. It is sometimes possible to harvest a brewers yeast strain from a bottle but it is difficult and time consuming, two things that home brewers typically don’t like. Also, the there are so many great yeast strains available to the home brewer that you can often find a similar one with a little experimentation.

If you are not able to get the ingredients from the brewer, you may be able to figure them out yourself. It’s not as hard as it sounds but it does take some practice and requires a lot of beer tasting. It’s tough job but I’m sure you can handle it. Every variety of malt, hops, and yeast has a distinctive flavor. With some practice you can learn to discern these flavors. Train yourself to pay attention to the subtleties of not only commercial beer but your own home brews. You will begin to notice that Crystal 60 malt, for instance, lends a certain flavor to your brews. Cascade hops gives an unmistakable aroma. British brown ale yeast tastes different than American brown ale yeast. Learning to pick out these characteristics can take years to develop but it will make you a better brewer.

If you are in a hurry, there are quicker ways to create clone brews. There are books availble, such as Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for 150 Commercial Beers and North American Clone Brews: Homebrew Recipes for Your Favorite American and Canadian Beers, in which the authors have done the work for you by collecting recipes for well-known beers. Most home brew forums also have clone recipes. In fact, just Googling something like “Sierra Nevada Pale Ale recipe” will often yield results.

Another option is to buy a clone kit. Many home brew suppliers, online and off, make clone kits which come with all of the ingredients assembled for you. I recently brewed a Sam Adams Cream Stout clone from Austin Homebrew Supply, which has a very large selection of clone kits. I got the mini-mash version and here’s what it included:

• 10oz Crystal 60L malt
• .5lb Chocolate malt
• 2.5lb 2-row malt
• 6oz black barley malt
• 1lb wheat LME (liquid malt extract)
• 4lb amber LME
• 1lb maltodextrin
• .75oz Golding hops, .5oz Glacier hops (60 min)
• .25oz Golding hops (15 min)
• Wyeast London ESB 1968 yeast

I have recently come to the realization that my brewing set up, which is just a pot on an electric stove, sucks when it comes to efficiency. I can never get enough conversion from the grains to hit my target gravity. When I brewed the cream stout I suspected I would come up short on the original gravity so I added a cup of corn sugar to try to boost it. It was a good thing I did because my OG was 1.054 and the target was 1.055. For some reason, however, my final gravity was only 1.026 instead of 1.012, meaning the yeast did not comvert as much of the sugars to alcohol as it was supposed to. Not only did this only give me an ABV of only 4.2% instead of 6.1%, but the stout turned out very sweet.

I did a side-by-side taste test with my clone and the real deal. As expected, the clone was much, much sweeter. The color was not as dark, probably because of my inefficient mashing. The mouthfeel was very similar with that rich, creamy feel that you expect with a cream stout. I’m certain the difference between my stout and Sam Adams comes from my process and not from the ingredients. If I try this clone again, I’ll use an all-extract kit which should help overcome the shortcomings in my system.

Even though my clone fell short of the original, I learned something about brewing cream stouts and about problems with my system. The Sam Adams stout gave me a benchmark by which to measure my brew. That’s the great thing about clone brews; by imitating the masters, you can improve your own beer-making artistry.

So as the days get colder I always joke that it is great beer drinking weather since your beer stays cold. But sitting here drinking my morning cup of joe looking at one of my favorite sites lifehacker.com I ran across this story about mulled beer. Mulled beer is hot spiced beer. It was all the rage between the 1500 and 1800’s. It was thought to be healtier than drinking cold. There is a good history of mulled beer at northamericanbrewers.org

Here is a recipe from wikihow and the full how to is here as well.

• 12-16 oz decent-quality beer (the contents of your average bottle or can of beer)
• 1 chicken egg, separated
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 pinch ground ginger, or 1 slice (sometimes called “coins”) of ginger 1/4″ long
• 1 pinch ground nutmeg
• 1-2 pinch(es) cinnamon, or 1″ section of a cinnamon stick
• 1 pinch ground cloves or 2-5 whole cloves
• 1 tablespoon honey

So hot spiced beer? I will have to try and post about it as that is what we do at BeerUtopia.com but if you have tried it let me know.

My favorite time of the year is Fall. The weather gets cooler, the days shorter, and pumpkins magically appear at the supermarket. That means it’s time to brew some pumpkin beer!

I have never brewed a pumpkin beer so this will be a learning experience. I bought a pumpkin ale ingredient kit from Austin Homebrew Supply and grabbed an 8 lb pumpkin from the grocery store. The pumpkin is optional but is a pumpkin beer brewed with no pumpkin really a pumpkin beer? Yeah, I didn’t think so. The instructions say you can use canned pumpkin instead of fresh but that sounded messy.

[Note: This will not be a step-by-step home brewing post. Check out the Belgian dubbel post for more detailed instructions. The steps are basically the same except for mashing the grains as described below.]

I decided to try brewing a mini-mash which is between all-extract and all-grain brewing but does not require any extra equipment. Basically, you use more grains and less extract than an extract recipe but the mashing takes place in the brew kettle rather than a mash tun.

Pumpkin beer ingredients (hops not shown)

Here’s the recipe:

Grains:
1.5 lb 2-row
1 lb Vienna
.5 lb Crystal 60L
.5 lb Cara-Munich

Liquid Malt Extract (LME):
4.5 lb extra pale
1 lb Munich

1 oz First Gold hops(6.9% alpha acid), .5 oz @ 60 minutes, .5 oz @ 45 minutes
3-4 lb pumpkin
Spices: 1 tsp cinnamon, 3/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp mace, 7 g sweet orange peel
Wyeast London Ale 1028 (or White Labs British Ale 005 or Windsor Ale dry yeast)

Gut it, cut it up, and bake it

The first step is to prepare the pumpkin. Cut it in half and gut it. Then cut it into small pieces and bake in the oven at 350° for about an hour, or until the pumpkin starts to soften. Let it cool then separate the meat from the shell with a knife or spoon. My 8 lb raw pumpkin yielded about 3.5 lb of prepared pumpkin which was just right.

Grain and pumpkin mashing at 155

I didn’t have a grain bag big enough for both the grains and pumpkin so I put them in separate bags. In fact, the grain just barely fit in my largest bag. The pumpkin can be added during the mash (first), to the boil, or to the primary or secondary fermenter if it has been pasteurized. I chose to add it to the mash. To extract the sugars from the grain (called mashing), soak the grain in 2.5 gallons of water at 155° for 45 minutes. Then turn off the heat and dunk the grain bag in and out of the water a few times like a giant tea bag. Place the grain in a strainer over the kettle, heat the mash to 170°, and evenly pour 1.75 quarts (1 quart for every 2 lbs of grain) over the grain. Allow the grain to drain then bring the mash to a boil.

Pour 170 degree mash through the grain

Once the mash starts to boil, remove it from heat and stir in the LME until it is completely dissolved. Return to a boil and add .5 oz of hops for bittering. After 45 minutes, add .5 oz of hops for flavor. After 55 minutes, add the spices. After 60 minutes, remove from heat and cool to less than 80° as quickly as possible.

Pour the wort into a carboy and add enough water to bring the volume to about 5.25 gallons.  When the temperature is around 75°, aerate and mix the wort by shaking vigorously and take an original gravity reading. The target for this beer is 1.055 but mine was well shy of that at only 1.044. My guess is that not enough sugar was extracted in the mash because the grain was so tightly packed in the too-small grain bag.

Yeast pack before and after smacking

After taking the gravity reading, pitch the yeast. This was the first time I had used Wyeast, which comes in a “smack pack.” Inside the pouch is a packet of yeast fuel which you “smack” to pop it and release the fuel. You can see that after 5 hours the pouch had swelled due to the yeast consuming the fuel. This is kind of like a miniature starter which is why I did not make a starter as I did for the Belgian dubbel. I regretted this when fermentation didn’t start as quickly as I had hoped. Once it started, it was pretty vigorous so hopefully I’ll reach my target 1.012 final gravity which will give a respectable 4.2% – 4.7% ABV.

After I was finished brewing the beer I had 3.5 lbs of pumpkin which had been soaking in a barley malt stew for 45 minutes. What to do with it? Make pumpkin pies! Bonus! My wife was able to make 3 pies out of the pumpkin. I honestly can’t taste the malt but you can’t beat 5 gallons of pumpkin beer and 3 pumpkin pies out of a $2 pumpkin. Man, I love the Fall!

Remember making Popsicles as a kid. You would put Kool-aid in an ice cube tray, use toothpicks for handles and freeze. I still do it today for my kids but I found this article from Life in the fast lane.ca

They found a restaurant making Hopsicle, thats right popsicles made from beer. They also have a recipe for beer ice cream and something I may just have to try Double Chocolate Stout Beer Ice cream float. I love beer but would never have thought about trying this, but since this site is all about beer I guess we will have to try it.

Since summer is in full swing, I decided to try brewing a Belgian wheat beer. Belgian wheats use coriander, orange peel, and a special wheat yeast to create a light, citrus-y, slightly spicy beer that is perfect for warm weather. (Think Blue Moon.)

I thought that honey might lend an nice flavor and I decided to use dried orange peel because if you use fresh orange peel, it can make your beer bitter if there is too much pith. I needed at least an ounce of dried peel but only had .3 oz and couldn’t find anymore anywhere in town. So, my wife suggested substituting rose hips since they have a citrus flavor. “Rose hips don’t sound like a very manly beer ingredient,” I thought but what the heck. Rose hips have been used in wine and mead so it’s not too far out to use them in beer.

To keep things simple I used the Coopers wheat beer kit which has hopped malt extract and wheat yeast. So here’s the recipe:

1 Coopers wheat beer kit
2.5 lbs honey
1.5 oz coriander (Use whole coriander seeds and crush them. Don’t use coriander powder.)
.3 oz dried orange peel
1 oz dried rose hips

Boil malt extract and honey for 60 minutes. Add coriander, orange peel, and rose hips during last 10 minutes of the boil.

O.G . = 1.020
F.G. = 1.011
ABV = 5%

The results were better than I could have imagined. The beer is refreshing with a strong citrus smell and taste. It is exceptionally smooth and well balanced with zero aftertaste. The carbonation and head were a little disappointing (as you can see in the photo) because I used a sparkling amber dried malt extract (DME) as the primer for bottling. I have since learned that DME can take a long time to create carbonation. I also wish it was a tad drier but I think that’s the result of using so much honey.

I took some to a brew club meeting and it was a hit. I also took some to a 4th of July party and everyone was talking about “that rose hip beer.” Even people that don’t really like beer liked it.

I feel a little guilty for having used a beer kit. It’s like making cookies using frozen cookie dough, adding sprinkles and everyone ohhing and ahhing over your cooking skills. So I have decided to try to recreate it without using a kit. I am also officially naming it Honey Rose which I think is slightly better than That Rose Hip Beer. I’ll let you know how it turns out.