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
Directions
Mash and boil
Pour hot water over the malt and let it infuse for 3 hours, mashing it in the first half hour.
Run the mixture over the hops infused in water.
Boil the hops with the wort for 2 hours after it begins to boil.
Ferment and seal
Cool a pailful of the mixture and add 2 quarts of yeast.
Cover the bung-hole with paper after fermentation is complete.
Add 1½ pounds of dried hops to the bung-hole and seal it.
Age
Let it stand in casks for 12 months and in bottles for another 12 months before drinking.
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 + beertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together55 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Hops + beertop 42% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together0 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
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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
- Supplies starches that convert to fermentable sugars, which the yeast turns into alcohol.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Cool the mixture before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by hot liquid, so the mixture must be cooled before the yeast goes in. If it is still too warm, the yeast may die or fermentation may fail to start properly.
“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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