expenses only, the winter half is thought most meet for that
commodity: howbeit the malt that is made when the willow doth bud is
commonly worst of all. Nevertheless each one endeavoureth to make it
of the best barley, which is steeped in a cistern, in greater or less
quantity, by the space of three days and three nights, until it be
thoroughly soaked. This being done, the water is drained from it by
little and little, till it be quite gone. Afterward they take it out,
and, laying it upon the clean floor on a round heap, it resteth so
until it be ready to shoot at the root end, which maltsters call
_combing_. When it beginneth therefore to shoot in this manner, they
say it is come, and then forthwith they spread it abroad, first thick,
and afterwards thinner and thinner upon the said floor (as it
_combeth_), and there it lieth (with turning every day four or five
times) by the space of one and twenty days at the least, the workmen
not suffering it in any wise to take any heat, whereby the bud end
should spire, that bringeth forth the blade, and by which oversight or
hurt of the stuff itself the malt would be spoiled and turn small
commodity to the brewer. When it hath gone, or been turned, so long
upon the floor, they carry it to a kiln covered with hair cloth, where
they give it gentle heats (after they have spread it there very thin
abroad) till it be dry, and in the meanwhile they turn it often, that
it may be uniformly dried. For the more it be dried (yet must it be
done with soft fire) the sweeter and better the malt is, and the
longer it will continue, whereas, if it be not dried down (as they
call it), but slackly handled, it will breed a kind of worm called a
weevil, which groweth in the flour of the corn, and in process of time
will so eat out itself that nothing shall remain of the grain but even
the very rind or husk.

The best malt is tried by the hardness and colour; for, if it look
fresh with a yellow hue, and thereto will write like a piece of chalk,
after you have bitten a kernel in sunder in the midst, then you may
assure yourself that it is dried down. In some places it is dried at
leisure with wood alone or straw alone, in others with wood and straw
together; but, of all, the straw dried is the most excellent. For the
wood-dried malt when it is brewed, beside that the drink is higher of
colour, it doth hurt and annoy the head of him that is not used
thereto, because of the smoke. Such also as use bot