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Drink

To Make Cottage Beer

A fermented beverage made from bran, water, hops, molasses, yeast, and optionally white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Make Cottage Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Combine the bran and water in a large pot.

  2. Add the hops and boil until the bran and hops sink to the bottom.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a cooler.

  4. When lukewarm, stir in the molasses until fully incorporated.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Pour the mixture into a 9-gallon cask and add the yeast.

  2. Once fermentation subsides, seal the cask.

  3. After 4 days, the beer is ready to use.

  4. For table beer, transfer to stone jars with a lump of white sugar in each and cork securely.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

White bran
Provides starches and body that the yeast ferments into alcohol and a grainy flavour.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Molasses
Supplies fermentable sugars for the yeast and gives the beer its dark colour and rich flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, carbonating the beer.

The step that matters

Cooling the wort before adding the yeast. The mixture should be only lukewarm when the molasses and yeast go in. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to hot liquid 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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