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Horehound Beer

A fermented beer made with quassia, horehound, cayenne pods, lime juice, Spanish juice, water, brown sugar, and brewer's yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,332 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Horehound Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Make an infusion of quassia and horehound.

  2. Boil the infusion with cayenne pods for 20 minutes.

  3. Add lime juice and Spanish juice dissolved in cold water.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Mix the strained liquid with cold water and brown sugar.

  2. Allow the mixture to ferment for 4 days.

  3. Warm 2 quarts of the mixture and mix it with brewer's yeast.

  4. Let it ferment in a warm place until brisk.

  5. Combine the fermented portion with the rest of the liquor.

  6. Stir twice daily for 2 days.

  7. Keep the mixture away from cold air.

Clarify and bottle

  1. Skim off yeast.

  2. Draw off the beer into a clean vessel using a filter.

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. Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Quassia
Provides the intensely bitter flavour that defines the beer.
Horehound
Adds its herbal bitterness, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbonation in the beer.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the beer.

The step that matters

Let it ferment in a warm place until brisk. Yeast works fastest within a moderate warm range. Too cold and fermentation stalls; too hot and the yeast can be stressed or off-flavours can develop. Keeping the mixture away from cold air also protects it from unwanted microbes and oxidation.

“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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