You still have to pay for it because it costs money to make. But it’s completely open-source beer so you can recreate it yourself if you don’t want to buy it pre-made, or you want to modify the recipe.
I have no idea how to make beer otherwise I’d have a crack at this shitpost myself…
Yeah there 100% is and probably always has been. The yeast strain, the varieties and processing of the barley and hops, the water source, the process etc all make for wildly different products. So a make that has a distinctive and popular beer will absolutely guard the recipe. This was true at least back through the medieval period, and there are some Belgian beers that still have proprietary recipes that are hundreds of years old