Skip to main content
Drink

Good Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling hops, cooling, adding salt, sugar, and flour, then fermenting overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid and let it cool to the consistency of milk.

Build the starter

  1. Add the salt and brown sugar to the cooled liquid.

  2. Beat the flour with some of the liquid, then mix everything together.

  3. Let it stand until the next day, stirring frequently and keeping it near the fire.

  4. After a day, strain and bottle the mixture.

  5. Shake the bottle well before using.

  6. It will keep in a cool place for two months.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  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

Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid as a natural flavouring agent.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast, giving it fuel to become active and produce gas.
Good flour
Provides starch and proteins that feed the fermentation and thicken the mixture.
Sea salt
Controls the rate of fermentation and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Let it stand until the next day, stirring frequently and keeping it near the fire. Yeast ferments best in a warm, steady environment. Stirring spreads the yeast and sugars evenly and keeps the mixture from settling, so fermentation stays active throughout the standing period.

“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.

More yeast starter recipes

Potato 58Homemade 13Hop 9That Will Not Sour 4Bread 3 See all 138 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes