Name: Strong Beer, or Ale
Ingredients: 12 bushels malt (14 for stronger beer); 8 bushels malt (for ale); water (hot, but not boiling); 3/4 pound hops (for strong beer); 1/2 pound hops (for ale); 2 quarts yeast; 1.5 pounds dried hops

Why it works: Malt and beer work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strong Beer, or Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

Pour hot water over the malt and let it infuse for 3 hours, mashing it in the first half hour.
Run the mixture over the hops and boil for 2 hours.

Ferment

Cool a pailful of the wort and add 2 quarts of yeast.
Combine with the rest of the mixture the next day or the same night if possible.
Cover the bung-hole with paper after fermentation is complete.
Add 1.5 pounds of dried hops to the bung-hole and seal it.

Age

Let it stand in casks for 12 months and in bottles for another 12 months before drinking.

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.

Malt + beertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Beer + hopstop 42% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together0 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked 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

Malt: Provides the sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol.
Hops: Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
Yeast: Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Cool a pailful of the wort and add 2 quarts of yeast.. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the wort must be cooled before the yeast is added. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

“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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Strong Beer, or Ale