Why it works: Malt and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Home-brewed Beer
Ingredients
Directions
Make the wort
Combine malt and hops in a copper vessel.
While boiling, add bruised liquorice root, Spanish liquorice, and brown sugar or treacle.
Store and age
Cork the tin tightly and seal with brown paper and sand.
Let it stand for at least 6 months, preferably 12, before tapping.
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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Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together325 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 and body that the beer is built on.
- Hops
- Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
- Liquorice root
- Adds a sweet, aromatic flavour and some body to the beer.
- Spanish liquorice
- Adds concentrated sweetness and a deeper, darker flavour.
- Brown sugar or treacle
- Adds extra sweetness and fermentable sugar, along with colour and depth of flavour.
The step that matters
Sealing and ageing the tin. A tight seal keeps air and contaminants out while the beer matures. Ageing for months lets harsh flavours mellow and the taste round out, which is why the record asks for at least six months.
“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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