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Strong Beer or Ale

A strong beer or ale made from malt, yeast, hops, and hot water, fermented and aged for 12 months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Mash and boil

  1. Pour hot water over the malt and let it infuse for 3 hours, mashing in the first half-hour.

  2. Run the mixture over the hops infused in water.

  3. Boil the hops with the wort for 2 hours.

  4. Cool a pailful of the wort.

Ferment and age

  1. Add 3 quarts of yeast.

  2. Put the mixture into a tun as usual.

  3. Cover the bung-hole with paper after fermentation is complete.

  4. Add 1½ pounds of dried hops to the bung-hole.

  5. Seal the bung-hole.

  6. Let it stand for 12 months in casks and bottles 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 + beertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Hops + beertop 42% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. 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 sugars that yeast ferments, and the starches that hot water converts during infusion.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.

The step that matters

Cover the bung-hole with paper after fermentation is complete. Sealing the cask only after fermentation ends lets carbon dioxide escape during the vigorous stage, avoiding pressure build-up. A covered opening also keeps out air and stray microbes that could spoil the beer during its long aging.

“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.

More strong beer recipes

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