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Drink

To Make Cottage Beer

A homemade beer made from bran, hops, molasses, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Make Cottage Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Combine the bran, water, and hops in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until the bran and hops sink to the bottom.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve into a cooler.

  4. Stir the molasses into the lukewarm liquid until fully incorporated.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Pour the mixture into a 9‑gallon cask.

  2. Add the yeast to the cask.

  3. Seal the cask once fermentation subsides.

  4. After four days, the beer is ready to use.

  5. Transfer the beer to stone jars with a lump of white sugar in each and securely cork.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes
  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White bran
Provides the starches and body that the yeast works on to build the beer's flavour.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and fermentable sugar for the yeast to convert into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, turning the wort into beer.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Seal the cask once fermentation subsides. Sealing too early can trap pressure and off-flavours, while waiting too long exposes the beer to air. Timing the seal to the end of active fermentation keeps the brew stable.

“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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