So you love Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or maybe Guinness Stout is more your style and want to make a Guinness Stout Clone.  Where do you begin?  It’s not as easy as throwing some ingredients together and it’s not as hard as finding the Holy Grail, it’s somewhere in between.

Having brewed many, many batches of beer and thereby getting a feel for different grains, hops, and yeast certainly helps.  But that will take some time and you might want to brew a clone of your favorite ale sooner than later.  Well having someone who fits that billing might be helpful, but not everyone has the luxury of a buddy who has brewed beer for years.  So one way to get there more quickly is by critically drinking beer.

Critically drinking beer, seriously, what does that even mean?  Well if you want to quickly gain an appreciation of the many grains and hops available to the brewer, critically drinking beer will certainly help you out.  Drinking your beer critically is simply pouring your beer into a clear glass instead of gulping it down right out of the bottle and making notes about what you see, smell, taste, and feel.  Start by buying some random six packs of commercial craft beers at the local beer store.  Buying mix and match six packs are a great way for trying a lot of different beer without buying entire six packs.  After you’ve got the beers chilling in your fridge, take one out that looks good.  Go to the brewery’s webpage, many brewers will list ingredients (grains and hops) used in the beer (they won’t give you the exact amounts, afterall they want to you buy their beer, not make it!), then taste and smell the beer carefully.  This will allow you to get to know what Amarillo hops might taste like or what roasted barley tastes like.  Trying different beers with the same ingredients is nice to see how different ingredient combinations or different proportions of ingredients might taste.

The nice thing about a clone beer recipe is it might not be exactly what you were shooting for, hell, your first couple clones might not even be close to the target, but you’ll still have a couple cases of tasty beer to enjoy.  As you brew more and drink more beer critically, you’ll get better at cloning your favorite commercial beer.

Let me know how your latest home brewed clone has turned out!

Justin @ BeerEasy.com