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
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the wort
Pour the two pailfuls of second wort into the empty copper.
Quickly add the rest of the wort and 2 pounds of fresh hops.
Boil the second wort briskly for 1.5 hours.
Adjust strength and finish
After 1 hour and 15 minutes, cool some wort to 60°F and check its strength with a saccharometer.
If it reads 51, add sugar to bring it up to 73 or 74.
Boil the sugar with the wort for a few minutes, then draw off the contents and distribute it in coolers.
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.
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Wort + sugartop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together24 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Wort + hopstop 49% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 and body that the finished ale is built from.
- Fresh hops
- Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the wort.
- Sugar
- Raises the wort's strength so it contains more fermentable sugar for the brew.
The step that matters
Checking strength before adding sugar. The saccharometer reading must be taken on wort cooled to the stated temperature, since hydrometer-type readings are calibrated to that temperature and warm liquid reads incorrectly. Adding sugar based on a wrong reading gives a brew of the wrong strength.
“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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