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To Bottle Beer

A method for bottling beer, adding sugar, corking, and allowing it to ferment for several weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Bottle Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Bottle

  1. Bottle the beer when it becomes dead and vapid.

  2. Leave the bottles unstopped for 12 hours.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly with new corks.

  4. Add a piece of lump sugar to each bottle.

Ripen

  1. Let the beer sit for 4 to 5 weeks until it is ripe and sparkling.

  2. If the weather is cold, place the beer in a warm room the day before drinking.

Serve

  1. Pour off the beer carefully, leaving a small amount at the bottom to avoid sediment.

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. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Provides sugar that the beer's yeast ferments into carbon dioxide, carbonating the beer in the bottle.
New corks
Seal the bottles so the carbon dioxide stays in the beer, keeping it sparkling.

The step that matters

Pour off the beer carefully. Yeast settles into sediment at the bottom of the bottle during ripening. Pouring slowly and leaving a small amount behind keeps the sediment out of the glass and the beer clear.

“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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