Once upon a time, a very long time ago, somebody left an earthen bowl of harvested barley out to dry in the sun. There was a brief summer shower and the barley kernels absorbed the water – starting to germinate. When the sun came back out, the air, the ground and the earthen bowl warmed up and stopped the germination process of the grain. This is how Examiner.com recently described the production of the first malt.

This two-stage malting process of moistening the grain and then heating it breaks the some of the starches of the kernel down into sugars – specifically maltose – a form of glucose. Other starches in the kernel are converted into soluble starches and enzymes.

Any grain can be malted. So why do brewers primarily choose barley for beer? One reason was the early availability of barley. Barley is in the grass family; it is self pollinating and grew wild in the Fertile Crescent. It was easily made into flour for bread, was feed for animals and once somebody accidentally turned it into malt, barley became the first grain to be turned into a manufactured beverage.

Also, barley is the backbone of many brew recipes because the grain is particularly good at the malting process and for the beer itself. The high concentration of converted sugars simplifies the process of fermentation in ales. Along the barley shaft are spiklets, one fertile spiklet paired with two reduced spiklets. This is known as a 2-row barley; it offers a lower protein/higher sugar content that allows for shorter steeping and produces a clearer beer.

There is also a 6-row barley, higher protein/lower sugar content, that is often used in many lagers along with unmalted grains such as corn, rice and wheat. Some brewers use this method as a cost reduction for brewing; however, there is also the side benefit of head retention in this combination.

David Rains Wallace