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Strong Beer, English Improved

A strong English beer brewed with malt, brown sugar, hops, yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Malt and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 325 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strong Beer, English Improved

Ingredients

Directions

Mash

  1. Grind the malt coarsely.

  2. Pour 3.5 gallons of water at 170°F over the ground malt in a tub with a false bottom. Stir well and let it stand for 3 hours, then draw off the liquid.

  3. Add 7 gallons of water at 180°F, stir, and let it stand for 2 hours before drawing it off.

  4. Add 1-2 gallons of cold water, stir, and draw off the liquid; you should have about 5-6 gallons.

Boil and ferment

  1. Mix 6 lbs of coarse brown sugar with an equal amount of water and combine with the wort.

  2. Boil the mixture with hops for 1.5 to 2 hours until you have 8 gallons.

  3. Cool to 80°F, add the yeast, and let it work for 18-20 hours covered with a sack.

  4. Transfer to sound iron‑hooped kegs or porter bottles, seal tightly, and it will be ready in two weeks.

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. Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + hopstop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Malt + hopstop 49% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Provides the fermentable sugars and body that the yeast converts into alcohol.
Brown sugar
Adds extra fermentable sugar, boosting alcohol content and a rich, caramel-like sweetness.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the malt sweetness and help preserve the beer.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, producing the beer's character.

The step that matters

Cooling to 80°F before adding yeast. Yeast added while the wort is still too hot can be killed or stressed, stalling fermentation. Cooling first lets the yeast survive and work steadily.

“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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