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Strong Beer, English Improved

A strong English beer brewed with malt, brown sugar, hops, yeast, and water, then fermented for 18–20 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Malt and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strong Beer, English Improved

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 170°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mash

  1. Grind the malt coarsely.

  2. Pour 2½ gallons of water at 170°F over the ground malt.

  3. Stir well.

  4. Let it stand for 3 hours.

  5. Draw off the liquid using a faucet.

  6. Add 7 gallons of water at 180°F.

  7. Stir.

  8. Let it stand for 2 hours before drawing off.

  9. Draw off.

  10. Add 1 gallon of cold water.

  11. Stir.

  12. Draw off again to yield about 5 or 6 gallons.

Boil and cool

  1. Mix 6 pounds of coarse brown sugar with an equal amount of water.

  2. Combine with the wort.

  3. Boil the mixture with the hops for 1 to 2 hours until you have 8 gallons.

  4. Cool to 80°F (27°C).

  5. Add the yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let it work for 18 to 20 hours, covered with a sack.

  2. Use sound iron-hooped kegs or porter bottles, bung or cork tightly.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Malt + hopstop 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

Malt
Provides the fermentable starches and sugars that the yeast will turn into alcohol.
Brown sugar
Adds extra fermentable sugar, boosting alcohol and giving a rich, caramel-like sweetness.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the sweetness of the malt and brown sugar.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, making the beer.

The step that matters

Cool to 80°F before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or stressed by very hot liquid, so the wort must be cooled before pitching. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

“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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