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Drink

Strong Beer, or Ale

A strong ale brewed by mashing malt, boiling hops, fermenting yeast, and conditioning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

Prepare the wort

  1. Cover 12 bushels of malt with hot water and let it stand for 3 hours.

  2. Infuse 4 pounds of hops in a little hot water.

  3. Add the infused hops and water to the malt and boil together for 3 hours.

  4. Strain off the hops and keep for small beer.

Ferment and tun

  1. Let the wort cool, then add 2 quarts of yeast and mix thoroughly.

  2. When fermentation slows (2-3 days), remove the yeast and tun the ale by pouring in a quart at a time.

  3. Cover the bung-hole with paper for 2-3 days before sealing.

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 + beertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Hops + beertop 42% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. 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

Malt
Provides the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol, and the body of the ale.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
Ale yeast or small beer yeast
Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbonation.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast to the cooled wort. If the wort is still hot, the yeast can be killed before fermentation starts. Letting it cool fully first keeps the yeast alive so it can convert 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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