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To Cure a Hogshead of Sour Ale

A method for curing sour ale using isinglass, sugar, wort, plaster of Paris, and hops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and wort work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

To Cure a Hogshead of Sour Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the isinglass

  1. Dissolve isinglass in new ale and let it sit by the fire overnight.

Make the sugar mixture

  1. Boil brown sugar in new wort for 15 minutes.

  2. Combine the boiled sugar mixture with new ale in a pail and whisk for an hour until frothy.

Clarify and age in the cask

  1. Add plaster of Paris to the cask with the fermentation and whisk for 30 minutes to remove sediments.

  2. If the cask is not full, fill it with new ale and allow fermentation to occur, removing the acid part.

  3. Repeat filling the cask 4-5 times a day until fermentation is complete and the ale looks clear.

  4. When it resembles new ale, add spent hops, close the cask, and let it stand for 6 weeks.

  5. If not fine after 6 weeks, let it stand for an additional month.

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 + worttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wort + hopstop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Fining agent that gathers suspended particles so the ale clears.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and fuel for fermentation in the sugar mixture.
Plaster of paris
Helps precipitate sediment and clarify the ale during cask work.
Spent hops
Adds bitterness and aroma to the ale as it stands in the cask.

The step that matters

Adding plaster of Paris to the fermenting cask. Plaster of Paris must be fully mixed into the active cask to bind sediment and help clear the ale. Poor mixing leaves cloudiness and uneven clarity throughout the batch.

“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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