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Drink

Home-brewed Ale

A fermented beverage made by boiling malt, hops, salt, sugar, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses 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 ↓

Home-brewed Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil the malt in 6 gallons of water for 2 hours.

  2. Strain in the hops and boil for another 2 hours.

  3. Add 1 teacup of coarse sea salt for each gallon of liquid.

  4. Strain again and add 1 pound of brown sugar and ½ pint of molasses.

  5. Boil together for 1 hour, then strain.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add 1 pint of brewer's yeast or 5 yeast cakes and let stand for 12 hours.

  2. Skim the mixture, transfer it to a keg, and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Bottle the ale.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Malt + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes
  4. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes
  5. 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

Malt
Provides the sugars that the yeast ferments, and the body of the ale.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
Brown sugar
Adds extra fermentable sugar for the yeast and a caramel-like sweetness.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, carbonating the ale.

The step that matters

Boiling the malt and hops. Boiling extracts sugars from the malt and bitter compounds from the hops. Too short a boil leaves the wort weak and under-flavoured, while the long boils here concentrate it and set its character before the yeast is added.

“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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