Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

39 THE MALTING INDUSTRY. Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd. A MALTSTER. BEFORE the Roman conquest beer was very little known in Britain, the chief beverages being mead and cider. With the improvements in agri- culture, however, a kind of ale was macle from barley, and long before tea was introduced by the early East Indian navigators, beer became the general beverage not only of our own country, but also of the leading nationalities of the world. The chief constituent of beer is malt, the pro- duction of which is the subject of the present article, an account of the various processes of beer-making being reserved for a later oc- casion. Malting as an industry is peculiar for its freedom from the influence of modern invention, the machinery of the malt-house at the most consisting only of appa- ratus for moving the grain from one place to another. The reason is easily explained. Malting is a ARRIVAL OE A CONSIGNMENT OF BARLEY. Photo: Cassell & Co. Ltd. process of nature, by which barley, or other grain, undergoes a botanical and chemical change. A grain of barley is of a hard tough nature, and on being cut open the inside of the corn has a firm, white, and occasionally glassy appearance. The main portion of the contents of the corn consists of starch, closely confined in minute cells, so small that even when the barley is finely ground, the starch is not free, and cannot be dissolved. The removal of these cells is one of the objects of malting, but this is not enough, as the brewer does not want starch which is unfer- mentable, but sugar, of a kind which can be fermented by yeast. Now starch and sugar are substances of a very similar nature, the chemical elements being the same in each, but in different proportions, so that, as we shall see, all that is necessary to produce from the starch a fermentable brewing material, is a comparatively small chemical change.