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Drink

Strong Beer or Ale

A strong ale brewed from malt, hops, and yeast, fermented and aged for up to two years.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strong Beer or Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Mash and boil

  1. Pour hot water over the malt.

  2. Mash the mixture for the first half hour.

  3. Let it infuse for 3 hours.

  4. Run the mixture over the hops.

  5. Boil for 2 hours once it begins to boil.

Ferment

  1. Cool a pailful of the mixture.

  2. Add 2 quarts of yeast.

  3. Combine the yeast with the rest of the mixture the next day, if possible the same night.

  4. Cover the bunghole with paper when fermentation is complete.

  5. Add dried hops into the bunghole before sealing it up.

Age

  1. Let it stand in casks for 12 months.

  2. Let it stand 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.

  1. 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 yeast ferments into alcohol, and the body of the ale.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the malt's sweetness and contribute aroma.
Yeast (in the method)
Ferments the sugars from the malt into alcohol and carbonation.

The step that matters

Combine the yeast with the rest of the mixture the next day, if possible the same night.. Yeast works best when pitched promptly into cooled wort. Waiting too long gives unwanted bacteria and wild yeasts time to grow, which can spoil the batch.

“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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