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Treacle Beer

A simple beer made by mixing boiling water, treacle, cold water, yeast, and optionally malt and hops, then fermenting for three days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Treacle Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the beer

  1. Combine boiling water and treacle in a large container.

  2. Add cold water and yeast, mixing well.

  3. Transfer to a cask and cover tightly.

Store and serve

  1. After three days, the beer will be ready to drink.

  2. For longer storage, add malt and hops before fermentation ends.

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

Treacle
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Malt
Adds body and extra fermentable sugars for longer-keeping beer.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the beer for longer storage.

The step that matters

Covering the cask tightly. A tight cover keeps air out so the yeast ferments anaerobically and the beer does not spoil or oxidise.

“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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