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Yeast No. 1

A yeast starter made by boiling hops, adding malt, and fermenting at 85°F for 48 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Hops and malt work together. They rank in the top 49% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Yeast No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Boil the hops in the water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a 10 to 12 mesh sieve.

  3. Cool the hop water to 150°F (65°C).

Make the starter

  1. Stir in the malt.

  2. Raise the temperature to 170°F (77°C) by adding boiling water.

  3. Cover the yeast can tightly and let it stand for one hour.

  4. Strain and cool down to 85°F (29°C) by placing the yeast can in a water-filled barrel or tank.

  5. Keep the temperature at 85°F (29°C) for 48 hours.

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. Hops + malttop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1 recipe

    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

Hops
Boiled into the water to contribute bitterness and aroma to the starter.
Ground malt
Supplies sugars that the yeast feeds on, driving its activity during the starter.

The step that matters

Cool to 85°F (29°C) before the yeast goes in. Yeast is sensitive to heat. Cooling the liquid to a moderate temperature before adding yeast helps keep the yeast alive and active, while holding it steady lets it multiply evenly.

“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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