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Hop Beer

A beer brewed by boiling hops, ginger, sugar, and yeast in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Hop Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop infusion

  1. Boil the hops in 5 quarts of water for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the hops.

  3. Add 5 more quarts of water and the ginger.

  4. Boil a little longer.

  5. Strain again.

Finish and ferment

  1. Add the sugar.

  2. Add 1 pint of yeast when the mixture is lukewarm.

  3. After 24 hours, it will be ready for bottling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + hopstop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hops
Provide the bitter and aromatic flavour that characterises the beer.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and alcohol in the beer.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished beer.

The step that matters

Add the yeast when the mixture is lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot liquid can stop fermentation. Cooling to lukewarm keeps the yeast alive so it can convert the sugar.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, hops):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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