Barley is used in its natural state for feeding poultry, and constitutes the material for making malt. When threshed, the grain is called Scotch barley; further prepared, pearl-barley ; carefully ground, patent barley ; or, less prepared, barley-meal, which makes agreeable cakes.

The chief value of barley, however, is that it furnishes the malt for our beers.

Malt is procured from barley in the following manner : -

Constituent parts - I lb. contains -

The maltster moistens his barley and spreads it on the floor of a dark room to heat and sprout. When the germ is about to burst from its envelope, he stops the growth by drying the grain gently on the floor of his kiln. It is then called malted barley, and has a sweet taste. The starch of the barley is changed into soluble grape-sugar; the gluten into a white soluble substance, called diastase.

The maltster has only taken advantage of the chemistry of nature with respect to a growing plant. The grain consists of two principal substances - starch and gluten. When moistened by the rain and dew, the grain begins to sprout ; the starch and gluten are intended to feed the young plant, but they cannot be dissolved in water, so in their natural state they cannot pass out of the body of the seed to nourish the growing germ. Therefore, as the sprouting proceeds, a chemical change in them has been wonderfully ordained. This change takes place at the bottom of the germ, exactly where the starch and gluten are needed for food. The gluten is changed into diastase (among other products); the starch again is changed by the diastase mixing with it, into grape-sugar, which is soluble in the sap, and therefore can be carried up as food for the young plant. We all know that sprouting corn is sweet.

The maltster retains the germ just in this chemical condition, and uses for beer the substance which nature provides for the growing plant.

One pound of diastase is sufficient to change a thousand pounds of starch into grape-sugar.

The malt is ready, when thus prepared, for the mash-tub.

By a further and very familiar chemical process it is turned into beer.

Barley is deficient in crude gluten.

Barley-meal makes more fat and less muscle than Wheat-flour.