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 ↓
Strong Beer or Ale
Ingredients
Directions
Make the wort
Pour hot water (not boiling) over the malt and let it infuse for 3 hours, mashing in the first half hour.
Run the mixture over the hops infused in water.
Cool a pailful of the wort and add 2 quarts of yeast.
Ferment and age
Cover the bunghole with paper when fermentation is complete.
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 + 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 the starches that convert to fermentable sugars, which the yeast turns into alcohol.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma, balancing the sweetness of the malt.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Adding the yeast to cooled wort. Wort that is still hot can kill yeast cells, stalling fermentation. Cooling a portion first keeps the yeast alive so it can start fermenting the sugars.
“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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