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 ↓
Sour Ale, to Restore
Ingredients
Directions
Cask
Rack the sour ale into a 4½ gallon cask.
Add 8 oz. of new hops and bung it down tightly.
Store the cask in a cellar for at least six months.
Bottle
If in bottles, add ¼ teaspoon of carbonate of soda and 1 large teaspoon of brown sugar to each bottle.
Cork the bottles well and tie them down like ginger beer.
Place the bottles cork downwards for about three weeks in a not too cold area.
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.
-
Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Ale
- Forms the base liquid that matures into the sour beer.
- New hops
- Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the beer during long storage.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts to release carbon dioxide, adding fizz when bottled.
- Brown sugar
- Feeds the yeast in the bottle, producing carbon dioxide for carbonation.
The step that matters
Cork the bottles well and tie them down. A loose seal lets carbon dioxide escape, leaving the beer flat, and a weak closure can fail under the pressure built up during secondary fermentation.
“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.
You might also like
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes
Brown Coffee with Egg175 recipes
Blackberry Cordial129 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.