During germination a remarkable change has taken place in the substance of the grain. The glutinous constituent has almost entirely disappeared, and is supposed to have passed into the matter of the radicles, while a portion of the starch is converted into sugar and mucilage. The change is similar to what starch undergoes when dissolved in water, and digested in a heat of about 160°F. along with a little gluten. The thick paste becomes gradually liquid, transparent, and sweet tasted, and the solution contains now, sugar and gum, mixed with some unaltered starch. The gluten suffers a change at the same time, and becomes acescent, so that only a certain quantity of starch can be thus converted by a quantity of gluten. By the artificial growth upon the malt-floor, all the gluten and albumen present in barley are not decomposed, and only about one half of the starch is converted into sugar; the other half, by a continuance of the germination, would only go to the growth of the roots and stems of the plant; but it receives its nearly complete conversion into sugar without any notable waste of substance in the brewer’s operation of mashing.
The kiln-drying.—When the malt has become perceptibly dry to the hand upon the floor, it is taken to the kiln, and dried hard with artificial heat, to stop all further growth, and enable it to be kept, without change, for future use, at any time. The malt-kiln, which is particularly described in the next page, is a round or a square chamber, covered with perforated plates of cast iron, whose area is heated by a stove or furnace, so that not merely the plates on which the malt is laid are warmed, but the air which passes up through the stratum of malt itself, with the effect of carrying off very rapidly the moisture from the grains. The layer of malt should be about 3 or 4 inches thick, and evenly spread, and its heat should be steadily kept at from the 90th to the 100th degree of Fahrenheit’s scale, till the moisture be mostly exhaled from it. During this time the malt must be turned over at first frequently, and latterly every three or four hours. When it is nearly dry, its temperature should be raised to from 145° to 165°F., and it must be kept at this heat till it has assumed the desired shade of colour, which is commonly a brownish-yellow or a yellowish-brown. The fire is now allowed to die out, and the malt is left on the plates till it has become completely cool; a result promoted by the stream of cool air, which now rises up through the bars of the grate; or the thoroughly dry browned malt may, by damping the fire, be taken hot from the plates, and cooled upon the floor of an adjoining apartment. The prepared malt must be kept in a dry loft, where it can be occasionally turned over till it is used. The period of kiln-drying should not be hurried. Many persons employ two days in this operation.
According to the colour and the degree of drying, malt is distributed into three sorts; pale, yellow, and brown. The first is produced when the highest heat to which it has been subjected is from 90° to 100° F.; the amber yellow, when it has suffered a heat of 122°; and the brown when it has been treated as above described. The black malt used by the porter brewer to colour his beer, has suffered a much higher heat, and is partially charred. The temperature of the kiln should, in all cases, be most gradually raised, and most equably maintained. If the heat be too great at the beginning, the husk gets hard dried, and hinders the evaporation of the water from the interior substance; and should the interior be dried by a stronger heat, the husk will probably split, and the farina become of a horny texture, very refractory in the mash-tun. In general, it is preferable to brown malt, rather by a long-continued moderate heat, than by a more violent heat of shorter duration, which is apt to carbonise a portion of the mucilaginous sugar, and to damage the article. In this way, the sweet is sometimes converted into a bitter principle.
During the kiln-drying, the roots and acrospire of the barley become brittle, and fall off; and are separated by a wire sieve whose meshes are too small to allow the malt itself to pass through.
A quantity of good barley, which weighs 100 pounds, being judiciously malted, will weigh, after drying and sifting, 80 pounds. Since the raw grain, dried by itself at the same temperature as the malt, would lose 12 per cent. of its weight in water, the malt process dissipates out of these remaining 88 pounds, only 8 pounds, or 8 per cent. of the raw barley. This loss consists of—
| 1 | 1⁄2 | per cent. | dissolved out in the steep water, |
| 3 | — | dissipated in the kiln, | |
| 3 | — | by the falling of the fibrils, | |
| 1⁄2 | — | of waste. |
The bulk of good malt exceeds that of the barley from which it was made, by about 8 or 9 per cent.
The operation of kiln-drying is not confined to the mere expulsion of the moisture from the germinated seeds; but it serves to convert into sugar a portion of the starch which remained unchanged, and that in a twofold way; first, by the action of the gluten upon the fecula at an elevated temperature, as also by the species of roasting which the starch undergoes, and which renders it of a gummy nature. (See [Starch].) We shall have a proof of this explanation, if we dry one portion of the malt in a naturally dry atmosphere, and another in a moderately warm kiln; the former will yield less saccharine extract than the latter. Moreover, the kiln-dried malt has a peculiar, agreeable, and faintly burned taste, probably from a small portion of empyreumatic oil formed in the husk, and which not only imparts its flavour to the beer, but also contributes to its preservation. It is therefore obvious, that the skilful preparation of the malt must have the greatest influence both on the quantity and quality of the worts to be made from it. If the germination be pushed too far, a part of the extractible matter is wasted; if it has not advanced far enough, the malt will be too raw, and too much of its substance will remain as an insoluble starch; if it is too highly kiln-dried, a portion of its sugar will be caramelised, and become bitter; and if the sweating was imperfect or irregular, much of the barley may be rendered lumpy and useless. Good malt is distinguishable by the following characters:—
The grain is round and full, breaks freely between the teeth, and has a sweetish taste, an agreeable smell, and is full of a soft flour from end to end. It affords no unpleasant flavour on being chewed; it is not hard, so that when drawn along an oaken table across the fibres, it leaves a white streak, like chalk. It swims upon water, while unmalted barley sinks in it. Since the quality of the malt depends much on that of the barley, the same sort only should be used for one malting. New barley germinates quicker than old, which is more dried up; a couch of a mixture of the two would be irregular, and difficult to regulate.