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Stock Yeast

A homemade yeast starter for brewing stock, made from water, hops, malt, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Malt and flour work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stock Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water

  1. Boil the water and add the hops.

  2. Take 1 quart of boiling hop water and pour it over the flour, mixing with a stick.

  3. Boil the remaining hop water for 15 minutes and strain it over the scalded flour.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes.

Make the wort

  1. Add the malt and let it cool to 90°F (32°C).

  2. Use a thermometer to ensure the temperature does not exceed 90°F (32°C).

Make the stock yeast

  1. Take 1 quart of stock yeast from the last brewing or make it by mixing 2 quarts of water, 2 ounces of hops, 1 pint of malt, and 3 ounces of flour, and let it stand in a glass jar for at least 36 hours.

  2. A thick foam will rise on top when ready.

  3. Use 1 quart of this yeast to stock your stock yeast, which must stand for 30 hours before use.

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. Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. 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
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
Malt
Supplies sugars that the yeast ferments and flavour for the finished brew.
Flour
Adds starch and body to the mixture, helping the yeast culture thicken and foam.

The step that matters

Keep the wort at or below 90°F (32°C) when adding malt. Yeast cells are damaged or killed by high heat, so exceeding 90°F can stop the culture from fermenting. Checking with a thermometer prevents this.

“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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