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Home Brewed Beee

A fermented beverage made from water, hops, molasses, spruce essence, ginger, cream of tartar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Home Brewed Beee

Ingredients

Directions

Brew

  1. Boil the water, hops, molasses, essence of spruce, ginger, and cream of tartar for 10 minutes.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool slightly.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the yeast and let it ferment for 12 hours.

  2. Bottle the brew or transfer it into casks.

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 + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Molasses + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. 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

Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Molasses
Provides sugar for the yeast to ferment and gives the beer its dark sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which carbonates the brew.
Essence of spruce
Contributes a resinous, piney aroma and flavour.
Ginger
Adds a spicy aroma and a warm, sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool slightly before adding the yeast. Yeast is a living organism that is killed by very hot liquid. The wort must be cooled enough that the yeast survives and can start fermenting the sugars properly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, molasses, cream):

  1. Gingerthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Macefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, molasses, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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