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Welsh Ale

A large batch of ale brewed from malt, hops, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Welsh Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Mash

  1. Pour 42 gallons of hot water (not boiling) over 8 bushels of malt.

  2. Cover and let it stand for 3 hours.

Boil with hops

  1. Infuse 4 pounds of hops in a little water and add to the tub.

  2. Boil the mixture for 3 hours.

  3. Strain off the hops and keep them for small beer.

Ferment

  1. Let the wort cool until it’s suitable for adding yeast.

  2. Add 2 quarts of yeast to the wort and mix thoroughly, stirring often.

  3. When fermentation is complete (2-3 days), remove the yeast and transfer the ale as it works out.

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
Provides the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the body of the ale.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast to the wort. If the wort is still hot, the yeast can be killed before fermentation starts. Letting it cool to a suitable temperature first lets the yeast stay active and begin fermenting the sugars.

“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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