Skip to main content
Drink

Common Small Beer

A low-alcohol beer made with water, hops, bran, molasses, yeast, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Molasses and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Common Small Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil the water and add the hops.

  2. Stir in the bran and molasses until dissolved.

  3. Let the mixture cool to room temperature.

Ferment

  1. Add the yeast and ginger, then mix well.

  2. Cover and let it ferment for several days.

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. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sugar that the yeast feeds on, giving sweetness and fuel for fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which makes the drink fizzy.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the molasses.
Ginger
Adds a spicy, aromatic flavour to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Cool before adding yeast. Hot liquid kills or weakens yeast, so the mixture must reach room temperature before the yeast goes in. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

“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

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesGinger TeaGinger Tea9 recipes