Cloned sheep
There are an abundance of homebrew clone recipes in the homebrewing literature. (We even have a couple on our site. See the links at the bottom of this article.) These purport to give you a recipe that will produce a beer that tastes like the commercial example. But can you really brew a clone brew by following a homebrew clone recipe?
The short answer is that it is highly unlikely. I am not saying this to be needlessly contrarian, nor to disparage the skills of homebrewers. It’s simply is a fact that a clone brew recipe is highly unlikely to produce an exact clone of its intended brew. However, if we carefully examine why this is, we can get on the path to actually brewing a very respectable clone brew – if that’s what we wish — or simply to become better homebrewers who are more aware of the sources of variation in beer.
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