Why it works: Hops and sugar work together. They rank in the top 43% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Home-brew
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the liquid
Boil the hops in water for 5 minutes.
Strain the hops and dissolve the sugar in the liquid.
Ferment
Mix in the yeast and pour the mixture into a cask.
Allow fermentation for 3 weeks to 1 month.
Remove the cork every other day to release gas.
When fermentation ceases, drive the cork in.
Serve or bottle
Wait 4 days before serving or bottling.
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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Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6 recipes
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
- Hops
- Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, which turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Venting the cask during fermentation. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide, which can build pressure in a sealed cask. Releasing the gas every other day prevents this. Driving the cork in only after fermentation ceases keeps air out once the yeast has finished.
“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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