SC - malt

[Wade Hutchison]

Great info posted over the weekend about malting, brewing and
brewsters, which I won't repeat.  I would like to comment about
this passage:

At 12:19 AM 12/11/1999 , you wrote:
>Bernadette Crumb said:
> > My lady, if you are willing to take a day or so and have the
> > space to do it, you can make your own powdered malt by sprouting
> > wheat berries until the sprouts are about the same length as the
> > berrie itself, spread them on a baking sheet and toast in a 250 F
> > oven until golden brown and crisp (about ten minutes IIRC).  Let
> > cool completely and pulverize in a food processor or grind in a
> > mortar and pestle.  Viola!  Malt powder...

What you get in this case is _not_ the same as the dried malt _extract_
that you use for brewing - what you have here is powdered malted wheat,
(malt flour?) which has almost no sugars, and a lot of starches and proteins,
along with some enzymes that, under the right conditions, will convert
those complex starches (dextrines) into simple sugars (maltose, mostly).
That's the mashing process of brewing which generates the raw materials
for the yeast to convert to alcohol.  The malt flour described above
could not be added to water and fermented without being mashed first.
This has been a public service announcement, generated to prevent anyone
from ruining a batch of beer.  Thank you for your attention.

Two other points: Why not just make rice beer?  Well, it turns out that
Sake making is a slightly different process than beer making with regards
to this conversion of the grain starch to sugars.  Sake making uses a
fungus (koji) to do the conversion, since rice (apparently) cannot
be malted.  Barley/wheat/rye/oats use an enzyme present in the grain
(Amalose) to do the conversion.   I don't think Bud's going to convert
all their equipment over to this process just yet - besides the product
wouldn't be urine-yellow in color, so no one would drink it!
         Second point: Egyptian brewing apparently started with a sort of
bread made from malted grain and fruit which was steeped in warm water and
allowed to spontaneously ferment.  I can dig up more details if anyone
is interested, although it has little bearing on medieval brewing practices.
         -----Gille MacDhnouill

	
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