8 STUDIES OF AMERICAN BARLEYS AND MALTS. 



istics of barley. The investigations herein recorded are purely pre- 

 liminary. It was thought, however, that the results thus far obtained 

 would be of sufficient interest to warrant their publication without 

 waiting for the completion of the work. 



REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. 



The view point from which the various investigations on this sub- 

 ject have been conducted and the conclusions drawn will appear from 

 the following survey of the literature. 



Protein and its cleavage products are attracting more and more 

 the attention of those who are investigating barley and malt and their 

 products. On the one hand, preference is given to low-protein bar- 

 ley, rejecting as unsuitable for brewing all barleys containing over 11 

 per cent of protein. Such barley would be best suited for the produc- 

 tion of distillers' malt. Other investigators believe that such a line of 

 demarcation is purely arbitrary and is apt during certain seasons to 

 cause the rejection of barle} 7 s which may produce good malts and 

 good beer. As a matter of fact, Prior" has shown that many Aus- 

 trian barleys with a protein content of 11 or 12 per cent have fur- 

 nished superior malts, even for brewing purposes, yielding a high 

 percentage of extract. 



The fact that the same variety of barley will vary widely in pro- 

 tein content from year to year, even when grown in the same locality, 

 due to the preponderating influence of environment, would indicate 

 the impracticability of insisting on any such arbitrary- standard as 

 the consideration of the protein content alone in accepting or reject- 

 ing barley for brewing purposes. Haase, who in 1902 proposed that 

 a good brewing barley should not contain more than 10 per cent of 

 protein, based his conclusions on the fact that Silesian barleys during 

 several years did not average much above 10 per cent. However, in 

 1905 more than 75 per cent of the barleys examined by Haase con- 

 tained over 11 per cent of protein. This caused him to adopt 1 1 per cent 

 as the basis of his system of valuation. This standard refers to the 

 2-row barley, Hanna and Chevalier, etc., grown in Europe; it does 

 not apply to the ordinary 6-row barleys the Manchurian or Oder- 

 brucker grown generally in the Middle Western States, for example, 

 AVisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, etc., as Wahl has shown. 6 The average 

 protein content of the 6-row barleys grown in this country is nearer 

 12 than 11 per cent, and only rarely is a sample with less than 11.5 

 per cent of protein produced. Such a standard may easily be ac- 

 cepted in so far as concerns the 2-row barleys or the thick-skin 6-row 

 barleys that is, the Bay Brewing barleys, grown principally in Cali- 



. Km u.. I'.inr,. L>1> : 52. 

 b Atldn-ss at tin- VuMma International Agricultural < Nuiirivss. 1!M>7. 



