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Drink

Cottage Beer

A simple beer made from wheat bran, hops, molasses or treacle, water, and yeast, fermented for four days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and molasses work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 702 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cottage Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Combine the wheat bran and water in a large pot or copper.

  2. Add the hops and boil until the bran and hops sink to the bottom.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a cooler.

Ferment and rest

  1. When lukewarm, stir in the molasses or treacle until melted.

  2. Pour the mixture into a 9-gallon cask and add the yeast.

  3. Once fermentation subsides, seal the cask and let it sit for 4 days before use.

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. Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Wheat + hopstop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat bran
Provides grain body and starches that give the beer its base flavour and body.
White hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Molasses or treacle
Supplies sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol, along with dark sweetness and colour.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, carbonating and flavouring the beer.

The step that matters

Stir in the molasses only when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so adding molasses or treacle to a boiling wort can stop fermentation. Cooling first keeps the yeast alive and lets the sugars dissolve evenly.

“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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