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Molasses Beer

A fermented beverage made from hops, wheat bran, water, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and molasses work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 702 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Molasses Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Brew

  1. Boil hops and wheat bran in water for 4 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a cask with one head removed.

  4. Add molasses and stir the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Cover with a cloth.

  2. Stir in yeast.

  3. Cover with a cloth and a board.

Bottle and cork

  1. Draw off the beer.

  2. Bottle it in clean bottles.

  3. Soak the corks.

  4. Cork the bottles 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. Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Hops + wheattop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sugar that the yeast ferments, adding sweetness and body to the beer.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which gives the beer its character and fizz.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.

The step that matters

Cork the bottles tightly. A tight seal keeps the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation trapped in the beer, so it carbonates instead of leaking out and going flat.

“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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