Why it works: Malt and hops work together. They rank in the top 49% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Ale, Home-brewed
Ingredients
Directions
Mash
Boil hard water and let it cool to 165°F (74°C) or use rainwater at that temperature.
Pour half the water over the malt and stir well, then cover for 1 to 1.5 hours.
Draw off the wort into another vessel and pour the second half of the water over the malt, letting it mash for 1 hour.
Boil and cool
Boil the first wort with ½ pound of hops for 1 hour.
Draw off the second wort and boil it with ¼ pound of fresh hops for 30 minutes.
Mix the two liquors and cool to 60°F (15°C).
Ferment and cask
Stir in 1 pint of yeast and let it ferment.
Once fermentation is complete, draw off into a rinsed cask.
Loosely bung the cask for 2 days, then fasten the bung.
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.
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Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Ground malt
- Provides the fermentable sugars that the yeast turns into alcohol, and the body of the ale.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the wort, producing alcohol and carbonation.
The step that matters
Cooling the mixed wort to 60°F (15°C) before adding yeast. Yeast added to very hot wort can be killed, stopping fermentation. Cooling to a moderate temperature keeps the yeast alive and active so it can convert the sugars into alcohol.
“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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