Last week we soared over the field crops of the world to get an overview of them and then focused in on barley and its role as the ‘malting grain.’

This week we dive down to pounce on the next question: What is malt?

We will develop answers to that by looking at malt at the scale of one grain at a time. We’ll look at the natural processes that underlie malting— the urge to procreate— and we’ll discuss the sneaky ways in which people have coopted these natural urges in the ‘malting process’ to yield what we then call ‘malted grain’ or often just plain ‘malt.’

We’ll step through some of the process details that transform raw grains, especially barley, into the large spectrum of malts available today, and we’ll all be able to confidently answer ‘what is malt’ by the end of this session.