n biting a grain asunder, you find it bite
easily, and see the _shell thin_ and filled up well with flour. If it bite
_hard_ and _steely_, the malt is bad. There is _pale_ malt and _brown_
malt; but the difference in the two arises merely from the different
degrees of heat employed in the drying. The main thing to attend to is,
the _quantity of flour_. If the barley was bad; _thin_, or _steely_,
whether from unripeness or blight, or any other cause, it will not _malt_
so well; that is to say, it will not send out its roots in due time; and a
part of it will still be barley. Then, the world is wicked enough to
think, and even to say, that there are maltsters who, when they send you a
bushel of malt, _put a little barley amongst it_, the malt being _taxed_
and the barley _not_! Let us hope that this is seldom the case; yet, when
we _do know_ that this terrible system of taxation induces the
beer-selling gentry to supply their customers with stuff little better
than poison, it is not very uncharitable to suppose it possible for some
maltsters to yield to the temptations of the devil so far as to play the
trick above mentioned. To detect this trick, and to discover what portion
of the barley is in an unmalted state, take a handful of the _unground_
malt, and put it into a bowl of cold water. Mix it about with the water a
little; that is, let every grain be _just wet all over_; and whatever part
of them _sink_ are not good. If you have your malt _ground_, there is not,
as I know of, any means of detection. Therefore, if your brewing be
considerable in amount, _grind your own malt_, the means of doing which is
very easy, and neither expensive nor troublesome, as will appear, when I
come to speak of _flour_. If the barley be _well malted_, there is still a
variety in the quality of the malt; that is to say, a bushel of malt from
fine, plump, heavy barley, will be better than the same quantity from thin
and light barley. In this case, as in the case of wheat, the _weight_ is
the criterion of the quality. Only bear in mind, that as a bushel of
wheat, weighing _sixty-two_ pounds, is better worth _six_ shillings, than
a bushel weighing _fifty-two_ is worth _four_ shillings, so a bushel of
malt weighing _forty-five_ pounds is better worth _nine_ shillings, than a
bushel weighing _thirty-five_ is worth _six_ shillings. In malt,
therefore, as in every thing else, the word _cheap_ is a deception, unless
the quality be taken into view. Bu