Name: Strong Beer, or Ale
Ingredients: 12 bushels of malt (or 14 for a stronger beer); 3/4 pound of hops (for strong beer); 1/2 pound of hops (for ale); 2 quarts of yeast; water (hot, but not boiling)

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

12 bushels of malt (or 14 for a stronger beer)
3/4 pound of hops (for strong beer)
1/2 pound of hops (for ale)
2 quarts of yeast
water (hot, but not boiling)

Directions

Prepare the mash

Pour hot water over the malt.
Let the mixture infuse for 3 hours, mashing it in the first half hour.
Run the mixture over the hops infused in water.

Boil and ferment

Boil the hops with the wort for 2 hours after it begins to boil.
Cool a pailful of the mixture.
Add 2 quarts of yeast.
Cover the bunghole with paper when fermentation is done.

Age

Prepare 1.5 pounds of dried hops to add before sealing.
Let it stand in casks for 12 months and in bottles for another 12 months 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.

Malt + beertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Hops + beertop 42% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together0 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
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 fermentable sugars that become alcohol and give the beer its body and colour.
Hops: Add bitterness that balances the malt sweetness and contribute aroma and preservative qualities.
Yeast: Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbonation.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast to the cooled wort. Wort added to yeast while still too hot can kill the yeast cells, stopping fermentation. Cooling the mixture first keeps the yeast alive so it can convert sugars into alcohol.

“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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Strong Beer, or Ale