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Joseph Coppinger
Published by Good Press, 2019
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Malt House, the best construction of, with proper Barley Lofts, Dropping Room, and Flooring, how, and in what manner made, and best likely to last.
Malt houses intended to be annexed to breweries, should not be on a less scale than sixty feet long, by twenty-five feet wide. Unless there be a proper proportion of flooring to work the grain kindly and moderately, good malt is not to be expected. Two-floored houses are generally preferred to any other construction; would recommend placing the steep outside the house, to be communicated with from the lower floor by means of an arch way or window; the steep so placed should be covered with a tight roof; the best materials for making a steep are good brick, well grouted; the wall should be fourteen inches thick at least; this kind of steep will be found far superior to wood, as not liable to leak, or be worked on by rats; the sides and ends of this steep should be carefully plastered with tarrass mortar; the bottom may be laid with flag, tiles, or brick.[2] Two barley lofts, the whole length of the malt house, will be found highly convenient, as affording sufficient room to different large parcels of barley, and screening the same from loft to loft as it descends into the steep over wire screens; a contrivance I have found of great advantage in the malting operation, as finishing the cleaning of the barley before getting into the steep, a precaution that should never be omitted. The bottom of the screen should be cased with wood, communicating from loft to loft with a sack fastened to hooks at the lower end to receive all the dirt and screenings that may pass through the screens. The Dutch and German maltsters generally prefer having their lower or working floor under ground; but this I take to be a bad plan, unless in elevated situations, or where the soil is dry and gravelly; for if any spring of water or damp arises in the malt-house floor, or walls so placed, the injury to the malt is very great, and should be carefully guarded against. It is also very important to lay a solid foundation for your lower floor with stones, brick bats, or coarse gravel, which should be solidly compacted by ramming for the whole length, then levelled off by stakes, with a ten-foot level, to the thickness you would wish to give your floor—say three or four inches: the former thickness, say three inches, will be found sufficient. Lay your first coat on two inches thick with hair mortar; when this coat becomes sufficiently stiff, which will happen within twenty-four hours, you are to begin to lay your second or last coat of one inch thick over the first, to be prepared as follows: Take Roche, or unslaked lime, one part, by measure; fine pit sand, one part; clinker, or forge dust, finely powdered, two parts; clay or lome, by measure also, one part: let these different ingredients (taking the precaution of first slaking the Roche lime) be well mixed together, and then screened by a wire screen, carefully keeping out of the mixture all lumps and stones; the whole may be then worked up with a due proportion of water, observing that this kind of mortar cannot be too much worked or mixed together, nor too little wetted, just sufficient to work freely with the plastering trowel; the whole floor should, if possible, be laid in one day, and for this purpose several hands should be employed; in which case it will dry more equally and firmly. As soon as the floor begins to set, and that it will bear a board on it, without sinking in, you should begin to pound it in all directions, from end to end, with pounders made of two-inch plank, sixteen inches long, and from nine to twelve inches wide, with a long handle reaching breast high, and to be placed in the middle of this board; thus the operation of pounding will proceed without stooping or much labour. One or two men, with plastering trowels, should follow the pounders, wetting it with skimmed milk as they go, and set the floor as even and close as possible. If these two operations be well conducted there will not be found a single crack in the whole floor from end to end, which is of great importance to secure the making of good malt. Each loft should have uprights under the centre of all the beams from end to end of the house; this precaution is necessary to prevent the swagging or cracking of the upper floor. Trap doors should be placed at proper distances in the upper malt-house floor, to facilitate the shovelling of the couches from the lower to the upper floor. A well constructed kiln is of great importance to insure a successful result to the malting operation, and if large enough to dry off each steep at one cast so much the better. The most approved covering for malt kilns in England (although not the most economical) is hair cloth, as it is asserted, it dries the palest and sweetest malt. Many prefer tiles, as less expensive and more lasting; others dry on boarded floors, and if this construction be well managed, I take it to be as good as any, and much cheaper than either tiles or hair cloth. (See description page 23.) The dropping room for receiving the malt as it comes off the kiln may be constructed different ways; but I take it that a ground floor covered with a two inch plank well jointed, and properly laid, is preferable to a loft for keeping malt, and in this situation might be heaped to any depth without injury or danger of breaking down. Malt thus kept, if well dried before coming off the kiln, is never in danger of heating or getting slack. The common mode of keeping malt is in bins situated on upper lofts, often injured by leaks from the roof, and at all times liable to the depredations of rats, which in the other way can be effectually guarded against, and is a highly important object of precaution to be taken by the brewer. Should weevils at any time get into, or generate in your malt, which is common when held over beyond twelve or eighteen months, the simplest and easiest way of getting rid of them, is to place four or five lobsters on your heap of malt, the smell of which will soon compel the weevils to quit the malt, and take refuge on the walls, from which they can be swept with a broom into a sheet or table cloth laid on the malt, and so taken off. It is asserted, that by this simple contrivance not one weevil will remain in the heap. Malt intended for brewing should be always screened before grinding; and for this purpose it is a good contrivance to screen it by means of the horse mill, as it runs from the hopper to the rollers or stones to be ground, the expense of which apparatus is comparatively nothing when compared to the advantages arising from it.
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