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Over 100 Commercial Beer Clone Recipes From the Breweries Themselves

ByChris Updated on

if you are anything like me, you decided to get into homebrewing because you love craft beer and wanted to see how easy or hard it was to do it yourself. We don’t necessarily have this hobby to save money, but we definitely aim to recreate some of our favorite beers from time to time.

Some major breweries have made a point to help us homebrewers out. They know they got their start brewing up 5 gallon (19 liter) batches in their garages as well, and want to give back. We’ve compiled a list with some of the largest craft breweries around the country that have detailed recipes listed on their sites. While we only picked 3 beer recipes to showcase for each brewery, there are many more on each of their websites.

Modern Times

San Diego, CA • http://www.moderntimesbeer.com/

Modern Times opened their San Diego craft taproom in 2013 and their beers quickly became some of the most sought-after brews in the area. They decided to “open source” a lot of their popular beers on Beer Smith right from the beginning.

Avery Brewing

Boulder, CO • https://www.averybrewing.com/

Pick a beer on Avery’s website and scroll down to see if they provide the detailed homebrew recipe at the bottom. Their most popular year-round brews are listed, but some of their seasonal and newer beers don’t have corresponding recipes.

  • Avery IPA – Using only C-hops (Columbus, Centennial, Chinook & Cascade), this base IPA is one of their favorites. Using the London Ale yeast, you can expect this brew to have a bit of haze in the end.
  • White Rascal Belgian White Ale – Using a 50/50 grist of 2-row and white wheat, this white ale adds spices, orange peel and some uncommon hops (Hersbrucker & Bravo) to recreate a classic style.
  • El Gose – This timeless and traditional tart gose layers Sterling hops and lime juice, sea salt on top a grain bill that consists primarily of 2-row and white wheat malt.

Ballast Point Brewing

San Diego, CA • https://ballastpoint.com/

Ballast Point has published a lot of extract and all-grain recipes on their website, although none include their actual beers like the Sculpin series. The Scuplin IPA series of beers (Grapefruit, Pineapple, Habanaro, etc) are not listed, but you may be able to pick out their West Coast IPA and add some fruit to it to get close.

WeldWerks

Greeley, CO • https://weldwerks.com/

WeldWerks is a craft brewery has garnered national attention for its Juicy Bits New England IPA. In 2017, they decided to share a homebrew recipe of Juicy Bits with the Beer & Brewing publication. To date, I cannot find any other shared recipes by WeldWerks.

I recently made this recipe and it was fantastic. It uses El Dorado, Citra and Mosaic hops with most of them as late additions or dry hop. The grist is a mix of 2-row, carapils and flaked Wheat and oats. I’ve also had the original, they weren’t quite the same, but that may be because I decided to use the Hornindal Kveik yeast instead of London Ale III. Either way it was an extremely tasty brew.

Deschutes Brewing

Bend, OR • https://www.deschutesbrewery.com/

Deschutes say that they want to give homebrewers the “nuts, bolts, hops and nuances” of their favorite brews. However, what they do give you is closer to a rough “blueprint” to work off of. These recipes (if you can call them that) don’t provide any ingredient amounts or hop schedules, but it is a good look inside one of the most popular craft breweries in the US.

To find these blueprints, search their beers section and scroll down to the “Homebrew Recipe” section.

  • The Abyss Imperial Stout – Lots of Black, Chocolate and Roasted malts are the backbone of this stout that also features vanilla beans, molasses, licorice and oak barrel aging (good luck with that homebrewers).
  • Fresh Squeezed IPA – Their most popular IPA uses Citra, Mosaic and Nugget hops on top of 2-Row and Munich malts. This is one of the more popular homebrew recipes, but mostly because of the Northern Brewer kit that goes by the name of Fresh Squished. (hint: You can click on the instruction booklet on NorthernBrewer and get the exact ingredients if you’d rather construct the recipe yourself).
  • Pacific Wonderland Lager – This lager using Pilsner malt is hopped with Hallertau Mittelfruh, Hallertau Herkules and Mandarina Bavaria.

BrewDog

Scotland & Columbus, OH • https://www.brewdog.com/

Brewdog started out as a homebrewery in a garage, so they wanted to give back to the community. Since 2016, BrewDog has annually published their beers’ recipes on their site inside a singular and massive PDF called DIY Dog. Here are some of their most popular beers included inside that document.

  • Punk IPA – Using mostly Extra Pale malt, this crushable 5.6% IPA uses Chinook, Ahtanum, Simcoe and Nelson Sauvin hops in the boil with Cascade and Amarillo as dry hops for an insanely tropical fruit blast.
  • Elvis Juice IPA – Pairing with the typical “juicy” hops of Citra, Mosaic, Amarillo and Simcoe… they suggest adding as much grapefruit and orange peels to amp up the citrus. They don’t mention when to add the fruit, so we suggest either adding fresh peels at 10 minutes left in the boil, or dried versions of each during the first dry hop.
  • Hazy Jane New England IPA – Using primarily late or dry hop additions of Chinook, Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe and Amarillo hops, this “Vermont-style IPA” uses a grain bill of 2-row, Maris Otter, wheat malt and flaked oats.
  • + Over 400 other recipes in that PDF…

Boulevard Brewing

Kansas City, MO • https://www.boulevard.com/

Boulevard is a fairly well known brewery with wide can distribution across the US. They’ve decided to post the ingredients and basic brewing values on their site (pick a beer and scroll to the bottom of the page). Similar to Deschutes, they give you a “blueprint” to work off of, but don’t provide a lot of detail on grain amounts or hop schedules. Still, if you are a fan of their beer and have some experience with following homebrewing recipes, you can probably make these work.

MadTree

Cincinnati, OH • https://www.madtreebrewing.com/

I visited MadTree a couple of times in 2019, and while their brewery was impressive, their beers were even better. MadTree is one of the most popular breweries in OH, and their can distribution is pretty wide as well. They’ve posted recipes for all their popular beers already scaled down to 5 gallon batches, and while they don’t offer any yeast suggestions, I would suggest any of the Chico strains.

  • PsycHOPathy IPA – This year-round IPA is probably their most popular beer and is always on tap and in cans. Using primarily 2-row and Vienna malts, they layer on Galena, Chinook, Centennial and Cascade hops for a fairly bitter (71 IBU) beer.
  • Amber Ale – Using less than 10 lbs of malt, this 6% amber ale hops with Galena, Chinook and Cascade and adds even more Cascade as a dry hop.
  • Citra High Imperial IPA – This 10+% imperial IPA uses a ton of Citra and Simcoe hops on a primarily 2-row bases. They up the ABV by adding a pound of dextrose (corn sugar) to the boil.

Gigantic Brewing

Portland, OR • https://www.giganticbrewing.com/

Gigantic Brewing has over 18 recipes listed on their website including some of their most popular commercial brews. Their recipes give you the data you need to make 1bbl or 31 gallons of beer, so you will need to scale them to fit your own homebrewing setup.

  • Gigantic IPA – This 7.3% standard IPA uses a ton of Cascade, Centennial, Crystal and Simcoe hops to create a brew with a lot of IBUs.
  • Axis of Evil Pale Ale – Using Maris Otter as the base malt, this 6% ABV pale ale uses Wyeast 1728 and 5 different hop varieties including Pacific Jade as a dry hop.
  • MASSIVE! Barleywine – This 12% barleywine uses Magnum, Cascade and Willamette hops in the boil and Mosaic in the dry hop. This beer uses so much grain that you may need a dump truck to get it all.

Indeed Brewing

Minneapolis, MN • https://www.indeedbrewing.com/

Indeed Brewing made the decision to publish their own kits and recipes on their website after they pulled their kits from NorthernBrewer.com after AB InBev acquired the homebrewing supply store in 2016. Indeed suggests using either SafAle US-05 (dry) or Wyeast #1272 California Ale II (liquid) for all their recipes. They also have very detailed instructions to help ensure the clone you brew is as close to the original as you can get.

  • Day Tripper Pale Ale – This recipe uses a mix of 2-row and Maris Otter and a mix of 4 other grains to create this 5.4% West Coast-style pale ale. Uses Willamette, Cascade, Columbus and Summit hops.
  • Midnight Ryder Black IPA – Black IPAs are one of my favorite homebrews, and this extract brew from Indeed uses 11.5 ounces of 6 different varieties of hops.
  • Yamma Jamma Harvest Ale – Almost 1 pound of sweet potatoes, 13 pounds of grain, 5 spice additions and Glacier hops are used to create this one-of-a-kind pumpkin ale.

Chris has been homebrewing for years and enjoying the boom in craft beer at the expense of his wallet. Chris lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and 3 children and enjoys living a state that is considered one of the top states for craft beer.

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