On Malting. '■H 



with which the vegetation will proceed in the safest and 

 most natural order; either above or below this temperature 

 is a disadvantaaie, but an excess and fluctuation of heat are 

 highly injurious in a malt-houjc. In whatever way Ine 

 floors arc worked the temperature will continue to rise in 

 proportion to the time they lie undisturbed, and the only 

 method of checking the rise is by turning them. 



Moisture is the remote cause of all heat in vegetable sub- 

 stances, heaped together, and containing a farinaceous or 

 starchy matter. This matter passes into a state of fermen- 

 tation, attracts oxygen from the atmosphere, which in its 

 fixation parts with the latent heat it was betore combined 

 with, and this accumulating in the heap will frequently rise 

 to inflanmialion. The heat of a dunghill, moist hay-rick, 

 wet barlev, and all oiher similar heaps of wet vegetable 

 matter, originates in one and the same natural cause. In 

 floors of malt the heat is always in proportion to the quan- 

 tum of moisture and repose of the floor. 



The chief object in a well regulated malt-house is not 

 only to preserve the floors in one equable state of tempera- 

 ture from the cistern to the kiln, but more especially to 

 preserve every part of the same floor in an equal warmth, 

 A departure from this produces an unequal vegetation. In 

 the Hertfordshire method of working, as there never is any 

 increase of moisture after the corn leaves the cistern, an 

 equable and steady temperature in both of the preceding 

 cases can be preserved with much certainty ; but under the 

 practice of watering the floors it is not practicable to main- 

 tain the same equal degree of temperature either in the pro- 

 gress of the floors to the kiln, or in the different parts of 

 the same floor ; and the consequence is, that a forced, a fluc- 

 tuating, and an unequal vegetation is induced in the same 

 steeping, and the malt thereby becomes greatly injured. It 

 is heat in the first instance that dissipates the water which 

 the grain had imbibed in the cistern, and renders subsequent 

 watcrinsr necessarv. The floors cannot be heated without 

 an expenditure of moisture, for the warmth sweats the wa- 

 ter out of the corn, and when the floor is turned, the mois- 

 ture on the husk flics off by evaporation : hence, though 



the 



