When does a recipe become yours?

[Gibbon]

I'm with others and say that if you brew it...it's your beer. You don't really need to think about who's recipe it is. For instance, who ever questioned where Grandma got here apple pie recipe. All you know is that it's Grandma's apple pie.

I think most of us are tweaking recipes to get them to taste just thte way we want them given our own list of variables (water, system, environment, etc,) but even if we didn't it's all those things that make a beer ours.

The more you tweak for quality the better results you will get, but whatever comes out of the fermenter is your own.

[brewinhard]

If a base recipe is considerably tweaked (ie change in 2 or more malts, hops, yeast and fermentation profile or process) than I believe a recipe can be called your own. Simple subs for what is not available does not count. Obviously the more one brews and has success with brewing, the more that brewer learns what ingredients make good beer and how to produce it consistently. This of course leads to experimentation based on prior knowledge and good brewing practice which can eventually lead to new recipes of which one can call their very "own".