Why it works: Malt and flour work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Yeast, to Make
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the wort
Bruise the malt and pour boiling water over it.
Let it infuse for 14 hours, then strain and add the hops.
Boil for 20 minutes, strain off the hops, and stir in the flour while the liquid is boiling hot.
Ferment
Let it cool until milk-warm, then stir in the yeast.
Set the vessel near the fire and stir occasionally for 24 hours.
Store
Transfer to stone bottles and store in a cool place.
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.
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Malt + flourtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together260 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Supplies sugars and enzymes that feed the yeast and build the flavour of the starter.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma, and help keep the liquid stable during storage.
- Flour
- Adds starch that gives the liquid body and gives the yeast more material to work on.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars into gas and flavour, causing the starter to rise and become active.
The step that matters
Cooling to milk-warm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cooled to only milk-warm before the yeast goes in. Yeast works best at warm temperatures, so cooling it too far would slow 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.
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