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Drink

Hop Bitters

Hop Bitters is a brewed beverage made from ginger, hops, sugar, and yeast, finished with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Hop Bitters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil the ginger and hops in 98 gallons of water with 30 lbs of cane sugar for 4 hours.

  2. While still boiling, add 1 oz of Saccharin.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or muslin strainer into a fermenting vat.

  4. Cool to 75°F to 80°F.

  5. Add 6 to 8 lbs of brewer's yeast, depending on the weather.

  6. Ferment for 24 hours.

Cask and clarify

  1. Rack the Hop Bitters into casks.

  2. Let it sit for a week.

  3. Fine the mixture with 1 gallon of isinglass finings.

  4. Let it sit for another 24 days.

Bottle and rest

  1. Bottle the Hop Bitters.

  2. Keep for a week before using.

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. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + hopstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Kentish goldings hops
Contribute bitterness and aroma that give the drink its characteristic flavour.
Jamaica ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavour to the brew.
Cane sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Isinglass finings
Collects suspended particles so the liquid clears as it settles.

The step that matters

Cooling to 75°F to 80°F before adding yeast. Yeast works within a narrow temperature range. Adding it while the liquid is too hot can kill or stress the cells, while a cool liquid may ferment slowly or not at all.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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