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Drink

Jug Yeast

A fermented beverage made from boiled potatoes, hops, sugar, salt, ginger, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Jug Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil the potatoes and hops in a gallon of water until the potatoes are done.

  2. Mash the potatoes through a colander into the boiling liquid.

  3. Add salt, sugar, and ginger to the mixture.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let the mixture cool to lukewarm, then stir in the yeast.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a jar and let it stand overnight.

  3. Pour the mixture into a jug and cork it 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. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body to the liquid, giving the brew its thickness and mild flavour.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which converts it into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Cooling to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or stressed by hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, ginger. 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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