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Drink

Hop Bitters

A fermented beverage made from hops, sugar, salt, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Hops and sugar work together. They rank in the top 43% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Hop Bitters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. Boil hops in 1 gallon of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add sugar and salt; stir until dissolved.

  4. Add the other gallon of cold water.

  5. When lukewarm, add yeast (previously creamed with a little sugar).

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let it stand overnight.

  2. Skim and strain the mixture.

  3. Bottle, leaving some space at the top.

  4. Cork and tie the bottles.

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

    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

Hops
Provide the bitter and aromatic flavor that defines the bitters.
Raw sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds a little sweetness.
German yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbonation and alcohol in the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must have cooled to lukewarm before adding it. Creaming the yeast with a little sugar first helps it activate and disperse evenly.

“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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