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Strong Beer, English Improved

A strong English beer brewed from 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

Prepare the malt

  1. If you don't have malt, use a little over 1 peck of barley or twice the amount of oats.

  2. Put the barley or oats into an oven after bread is drawn or in a stove oven to steam moisture.

  3. Grind the malt coarsely.

Make the wort

  1. Pour ½ gallon of water at 170°F over the ground malt and stir well. Let it stand for 3 hours.

  2. Draw off the liquid through a strainer.

  3. Add 7 gallons of water at 180°F. Stir well. Let it stand for 2 hours.

  4. Draw it off.

  5. Add 1 to 2 gallons of cold water. Stir well.

  6. Draw it off again to yield about 5 to 6 gallons of wort.

Boil and ferment

  1. Mix 6 pounds of coarse brown sugar with an equal amount of water. Boil the mixture with the wort for 1.5 to 2 hours, adding the hops.

  2. When cooled to 80°F (27°C), add the yeast. Let it work for 18 to 20 hours, covered with a sack.

  3. Use sound iron-hooped kegs or porter bottles, bung or cork tightly.

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 starches that convert to fermentable sugars, forming the beer's base.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds fermentable sugar and a darker, richer sweetness to the beer.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the malt.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Cooling the wort to 80°F before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the wort must be cooled to a safe temperature before pitching. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation entirely.

“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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