Barley from a Maltsters Point of View. 
503 
The barley passes througli two sets of raacbiues. The first, known as the 
" Victoria Separator and Eccentric Grader," does the rough work, separating 
the sample into coarse refuse, large tares, and three grades of barley. 
This machine is, in principle, a series of five reciprocating sieves, with 
diflerent sized perforations. These sieves or screens deliver at different 
spouts the material passing over them, and are worked from an upright 
shaft by eccentric and connecting rods. An exhaust fan acting on the barley 
sucks up any fine dust or light grains, and delivers the refuse, which collects 
ia an enlarged pocket of the main pipe, by a spout into sacks. The exhaust 
can be regulated by a movable sluice to any degree of suction. 
It can readily be understood that simple sieves will not extract broken 
or half-corns, nor tares of a diameter equal to that of the barley. This 
machine alone is, therefore, insufficient to do the whole of the Avork, and 
the final cleaning is done on other machines, consisting of six pairs of 
cylinders, each about 2 ft. diam. and 8 ft. long. The cylinders are arranged 
in pairs, one over the other, the upper cylinder acting as a separator to ex- 
tract the smaller tares and haK-corus from the whole barley, and the lower 
as an ordinary screen. The upper cylinder is not perforated, but covered 
with hemispherical indentations smaller than the length of a grain of barley, 
though larger than half a grain. Hence the half grains, tares, and other 
seeds left from the first machine fall into the indentations or recesses, and 
are carried round in them until they fall into a trough below, in which an 
endless screw works, and delivers into sacks at the end of the machine. The 
whole-grain barley, which is thrown against the side of the upper cylinder 
above its horizontal centre line, is kept from going round with the cylinder 
by a series of scrapers, resting on the cylinder as it revolves. The full grains, 
of course, cannot fall completely into the recesses in the cylinder, and any- 
thing projecting from the recesses is pushed out by the scrapers, and by them 
conducted into the feeding trough to be presently described. 
The barley is fed to the different cylinders by an endless screw working 
in a trough at the ends of the cylinders, and at right angles to them. In 
this trough are openings delivering the grain into the cross or feeding troughs, 
one to each upper cylinder. In these cross troughs revolve blade propellers 
throwing the corn, as mentioned above, against the revolving cylinder in an 
oblique direction. The barley is thus being continually thrown up by the 
blades, and returned to the trough by the scrapers, and at the same time 
gradually advanced by the oblique action of these blades. In this way the 
seeds and half-corns are gradually separated as the barley travels along the 
trough and cylinder. The barley passes then through the lower or screwing 
cylinder, where it is acted upon by a second exhaust fan, to draw off all 
light corns and other refuse which are useless for malting purposes, and which 
had escaped the action of the first machine. 
It must, hov^rever, not be supposed that screening machinery 
is only useful on foreign barley. Owing to imperfect thrashing, 
English barley is often broken. Broken barley is useless and 
injurious to the maltster, and the machinery above described 
may be advantageously used for separating these half-corns in 
English barley. 
Owing to the extended use of various foreign barleys, and 
especially to the numerous improvements in the art of brewing 
that have taken place of late years, the process of malting has 
become of a far more scientific character than formerly. Each 
class of barley requires different treatment in the cistern, on the 
