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Drink

The Middle Ale

A strong ale brewed from second wort, hops, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wort and sugar work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

The Middle Ale

30 gallons of wort

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wort

  1. Pour the two pails of second wort into the empty copper quickly.

  2. Add 2 pounds of fresh hops to the copper.

  3. Transfer the strong-ale wort into coolers, ensuring the depth does not exceed 4 to 5 inches.

Boil and adjust strength

  1. Boil the second wort briskly for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

  2. After 1 hour and 15 minutes, cool some wort to 60°F and check its strength with a saccharometer.

  3. If the reading is 51, add sugar to bring it up to 73 or 74; for 30 gallons of wort, use 20 pounds of sugar.

  4. Boil the sugar with the wort for a few minutes, then draw off the contents and distribute it in the coolers.

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. Wort + sugartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wort + hopstop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Second wort
Provides the fermentable sugars that will become the strength and body of the ale.
Fresh hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the wort.
Sugar
Raises the wort's strength, adding fermentable sugar to reach the target reading.

The step that matters

Checking the strength with a saccharometer. Strength is measured on a cooled sample, because hot wort gives an inaccurate reading. Adding sugar only after this check ensures the wort reaches the target strength rather than overshooting it.

“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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