Malt Totally Explained

Everything about Maltings totally explained

Malting is a process applied to cereal grains, in which the grains are made to germinate and then are quickly dried before the plant develops.
The term malt refers to several products of the process:

The grains to which this process has been applied, for example malted barley;
The sugar derived from such grains which is heavy in maltose, such as baker's malt used in cereals such as Rice Krispies.
A product, based on malted milk, similar to a malted milkshake (for example, "malts").
whisky or beer can also be called malt as in Alfred Edward Housman's aphorism "malt does more than Milton can, to justify God's ways to Man."

Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, and malt vinegar. Malting grains develops the enzymes that are required to modify the grain's starches into sugars, including monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, etc.) and disaccharides (sucrose, etc.). It also develops other enzymes, such as proteases which break down the proteins in the grain into forms which can be utilized by yeast. Barley is the most commonly malted grain in part because of its high diastatic power or enzyme content. Also very important is the retention of the grain's husk even after threshing, unlike the bare seeds of threshed wheat or rye. This protects the growing acrospire (developing plant embryo) from damage during malting, which can easily lead to mold growth. It also allows the mash of converted grain to create a filter bed during sparging (see brewing). Other grains may be malted, although the resulting malt may not have sufficient enzymatic content to convert its own starch content fully and efficiently and may create a "stuck sparge" .

Maltings

A malting, sometimes called maltings, malthouse, or malting floor, is a building that houses the process of converting barley into malt, for use in the brewing or distilling process. A typical floor maltings is a long, single-story building with a floor that slopes slightly from one end of the building to the other. There are a number of maltings buildings still in existence, and a handful are still operational. Floor maltings began to be phased out from the 1940's in favour of 'pneumatic plants'. Here large industrial fans are used to blow air through the germinating grain beds and to pass hot air through the malt being kilned. Like floor maltings these pneumatic plants are batch processes but of considerably greater size, typically 100 tonne batches compared with 20 tonne batches for a floor maltings.

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