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Home-Made Hop Beer

A fermented beverage made from hops, sarsaparilla, sassafras, water, brown sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Hops and sugar work together. They rank in the top 43% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Home-Made Hop Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brew

  1. Put the hops, sarsaparilla, and sassafras in a large kettle.

  2. Add 3 gallons of cold water.

  3. Let it simmer all day, adding water as needed to maintain the volume.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Add 3 cups of brown sugar.

  2. Dissolve 2 yeast cakes in 1 cup of warm water.

  3. Add the dissolved yeast to the mixture when lukewarm.

  4. Place the kettle in a warm area until it ferments, about 2-3 days, indicated by bubbles on the surface.

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 + 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the brew.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to ferment into carbonation and alcohol.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that makes the beer fizzy.
Sarsaparilla
Contributes its distinctive root flavour to the brew.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, while cold liquid slows its activity. Adding it once the mixture is lukewarm lets the yeast start fermenting quickly and reliably.

“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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