The American Practical Brewer and Tanner | Page 6

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