Grant, I read a lot of recipes when I first started, mostly on Home Brew Talk and Aussie Home Brew but I also checked out BeerSmith and a few other more minor home brew websites and from reading all the replies to a recipe posted one thing quickly became clear. With most of the posted recipes while it would brew up ok and taste good, it wasn't what the same as the developer did it. I believe that a lot of the people that post recipes change something or leave something out that makes it that way. I mean it could be that you didn't use the same water that the original brew used however I still believe that the recipes posted are not the real one.
So, whenever I find a recipe that sounds good to me the first thing I do is look at it and ask myself what do I want to do to make this My Recipe. Change the hops to give it the flavor notes that I think it should have, adding other ingredients like Orange Peel or something, etc...