Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
I'm a fan of the robust porter myself, although it takes some skill to give it character.
I'd be curious to see how hard it is to replicate the imperial style beers so popular with the micro brews on a home scale.
-spence
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How hard to duplicate a commercial beer?
Most are very easy. Some are a little hard but can be done by an experienced brewer. Some are very hard owing to the need to use champagne yeasts , etc to attenuate to very high alchohol contents. For this , I believe combining brewing as high as possible with the yeasts you are familiar with and then extracting water (by freezing--distilling on the other hand is illegal for a homebrewer) to reach the very high alchohol plateaus.
One advantage the homebrewer always has over a commercial brewer is the element of cost. Homebrewers are not worried about making a profit so we can go nuts with specialty grains and expensive hops to get just what we want.
Some advantages the commercial brewers have is specialized equipment and access to some ingredients in bulk that are harder to find in small amounts at homebrew suppliers. Hallertauer Mittlefrueh hops is an example. Hard for the homebrewer to get but easy for a big outfit to import or through say a Washington State distributor.
The short answere is you can pretty well make anything a brewery can if you know how.