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I wish I could find a clone recipe for Cains bitter. The brewery has been defunct now for many years, but I could never find the damned grain bill :s
 
I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.
 
I started off with Greg Hughes, some of which were excellent, some less so.
Then moved on to Ron Pattinson's `The homebrewer's guide to vintage beer' which is excellent though so far I've only made pale ales from it.
Then the Durden Park book `Old British Beers and how to make them'. Also only the pale ales. I kind of like the simplicity of Victorian pale ales. Mostly smashes or just a couple of hops. Very bitter and not like anything I've ever had in a pub.
Also make up my own simple recipes - basically Victorian pale but with the final hop addition something citrussy like first gold or cascade.
 
I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.
That is a bit of a mad huge resource - never seen anything quite like it :oops: and hidden away on a hop supplier's site?!
 
I started off with Greg Hughes, some of which were excellent, some less so.
Then moved on to Ron Pattinson's `The homebrewer's guide to vintage beer' which is excellent though so far I've only made pale ales from it.
Then the Durden Park book `Old British Beers and how to make them'. Also only the pale ales. I kind of like the simplicity of Victorian pale ales. Mostly smashes or just a couple of hops. Very bitter and not like anything I've ever had in a pub.
Also make up my own simple recipes - basically Victorian pale but with the final hop addition something citrussy like first gold or cascade.
I agree that Greg's a bit inconsistent. Haven't done much from RP, but a dozen or so from Durden Park. I've got a beer I want to copy and the malts are listed as Pilsner, Cara, Munich. Hops: Mistral and Aramis. Nothing else except the abv. I can judge the colour, measure the FG and get the IBUs in the right ballpark, I think.
That's an exciting way of doing recipes, don't you think?
 
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I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.
Have bookmarked that website for future use. Thanks
 
I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.
Bookmarked too. Good find. I wonder how authentic the recipes are? Plenty of reading and cross checking to be done against Wheeler's. That'll fill an hour or two.
 
I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.
Thats gone in my favourites cheers MmmBeer athumb..
 
Bookmarked too. Good find. I wonder how authentic the recipes are? Plenty of reading and cross checking to be done against Wheeler's. That'll fill an hour or two.
I was wondering the same. What really caught my attention was a recipe for Guinness West Indies porter. I might give it a go next.
 
I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.
This is an excellent resource @MmmBeer , and thanks. There are one or two ambiguities between the recipes, though and the malt colours really need checking out. For example, the Guiness W I Porter species Gladfield's dark crystal at 96.4 srm, while the Old Seckled Hen calls for Gladfield's medium and dark crystal, both of which are 56.3 SRM (clearly not). Here's the link to Gladfield's Our Malts
The Sour Grapes malt is, in fact, acidulated malt at 2 SRM.
None of this detracts from the resource as we'd all check somebody else's recipe anyway, wouldn't we? I certainly would after the scaling errors in the little CAMRA recipes book.

Interesting take on Summer Lighning, by the way- with a tad of Munich in there!
Back to recipe browsing.
@Cwrw666 they've got some interesting takes on a couple of Lovibond recipes in there.
 
I've really enjoyed looking at the New Zealand recipes, and I think I'm going try more than a couple of their recipes. All their recommended malts are Gladfield malts (NZ) which have some great names, but a little research shows that they're all easily substituted except one. Indeed, they even provide a very detailed substitution chart- hoping that brewers will substitute from whatever TO Gladfield, of course. The malt I can't find anywhere else (in the world!) is malted maize and it's used in their 5 grain lager.
To cut a long story short, they do their own recipe list ( New & Improved Brewing Recipes. ) and I'm certainly going to have a go at two of them: Classic Nyoo Zilund Pilsner and Summer Gold (British Golden Ale with NZ hops). All the hops are available fro CML except Pacific Jade. Mine are already on the way. Can't wait. :beer1:

One of the hops- Taiheke- also goes under the name of New Zealand Cascade, even though it's never been within a hundred miles of a cascade hop.
 
Came across this quite by accident: Bison Brew | Craft Beer Guides & Tips | Learn to Homebrew . It does some good reviews on hops and equipment as well as some excellent "how to" posts, like "how to brew a kölsch". Haven't explored all of it yet, but I'm definitely going for the kölsch recipe. One PITA is that it doesn't seem to have an index or list of contents.
Enjoy.
 
Greg Hughes book, James Mortens book, looking through other peoples recipes, escpecially those that have placed in competitions or just making some up myself, some have been pretty successful, some less so!
 
I found a website a while back that listed dozens, if not hundreds of commercial beer clone recipes. After seeing this thread, I have been searching for it again and have just found it. It is a New Zealand hop grower's site, but has an interesting selection of recipes.

Hop Plants for Sale in New Zealand

You will have to adjust the malt varieties, as they are all quoted in a local maltsters selection, but that shouldn't be too hard.


What a goldmine!
 

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