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To Brew Beer

A method for brewing beer using malt, water, and hops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

To Brew Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the water

  1. Boil water in a large pot. If the pot is too small, boil water in smaller batches.

Mash the malt

  1. Pour cooled water over the malt.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 3 hours.

  3. Draw off the liquid into a separate tub.

  4. Pour hot water over the malt, then mix the mixture.

  5. Let it stand for 1 hour.

  6. If needed, add a third batch of water in the same manner.

Boil with hops

  1. Boil the liquid with hops for 1 hour.

  2. Draw it off, leaving the hops in the pot.

  3. Repeat boiling with additional water and hops as necessary.

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
Supplies the starches that break down into sugars during standing, forming the base of the beer.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.

The step that matters

Boiling the liquid with hops. Hops must boil long enough to release their bitterness into the liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves the beer harsh, and the hops are only added at this stage, so the timing matters.

“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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