I heart malt

[featherynscale]

Today's "That's What The Internet is For" question concerns malt. What the hell is malt? Is the malt in malt vinegar the same thing as the malt in malted milk? What about malt beverages? Can my regrettable tendency to devour entire bags of malted milk balls in one sitting and to drown my fish and chips in malt vinegar explain my preference for whiskey and stout beer?


Malting is a process applied to grains in which the grains are soaked and made to germinate, then kiln-dried before the plant has a chance to sprout, and roasted. This process causes the starch in the grain to become sugar instead (maltose, sometimes known as baker's sugar). Barley is the most often malted grain, because it apparently yields the most sugars.

The sugars from the malting process can then be brewed into ale, which can be turned to vinegar, which is tasty.
Or, the grains can be milled with wheat flour and combined with dry milk, becoming the basis for malted milk products.
Scotch whisky is generally brewed from malted barley (single malt) or from a blend of malted grains (blended). Irish whiskey is made from a mix of malted and unmalted grains. Given my fondness for malt in all its forms, this explains why I'd rather drink a Scotch any day. Bourbon whiskey, although also very tasty, is made mostly from corn and generally contains no malt at all. (On a non-malt-related note, they make whisky in Japan. I did not know this.)

My taste in beers is also explainable by preference for malt. Darker beer is made with darker malt, which is more strongly flavored.

This moment of malt has been brought to you mostly by wikipedia and Real Beer.

More on malt:
Malt: The Soul of Beer
The Darker Side of Malts

Comments

[diermuid.livejournal.com]

Vinagar is generally made from fruits, but there are some malt/fruit mixtures (the term escapes me at present) that would produce a malted vinagar. Ale itself does not have the acidity to form a good vinagar though. Of note- vinagar is actually wine that has gone sour.

The 'whiskey' I had in Japan was usually the rice wine 'sake' although they do now brew European things like beer. I do not believe that there are were traditional whiskeys out there though.

[diermuid.livejournal.com]

addendum - vinagar -used- to be wine that spoiled... now it is made on purpose when they realized that some vinagars were good cleaning agents and home remedies.

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

It's not "spoiled wine" per se... it's not like if you leave a sealed bottle of wine alone long enough, it'll turn to vinegar on it's own. And of course, if you're setting out to make vinegar, you don't just leave wine out and hope it 'spoils' -- you add Mother of Vinegar intentionally.

Any fermented liquid can turn to vinegar with the introduction of Mother of Vinegar, a bacterium which is considered a contaminant in the wine-making process. The bacteria consume the alcohol and excrete the acid we call vinegar. Once it's been introduced to a vat of wine -- even in a tiny quantity -- it's over. You will now only get a vat of vinegar out of this batch.

This is one of the main reasons for putting a water-lock seal on fermenting mead -- if something carrying Mother of Vinegar lands in your must, it's doomed. Fruit flies frequently carry the stuff.

Mother of Vinegar

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

Of course, with a name like Mother of Vinegar, everyone always knew that bacterium was destined for greatness.
Or to be eternally remembered as an insult. ("You mother of vinegar!")

But is there a Father of Vinegar? Or is little Vinegar doomed to grow up with only one parent?

Re: Mother of Vinegar

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Vinegar has two mommies.
But don't go around saying those things -- school boards and local governments all over the red states will be banning vinegar as the child of a homosexual process.

Re: Mother of Vinegar

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

Of course, I should've known!

I actually like the idea of getting the right worked up about lesbian vinegar. That'd be fun to watch.