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Reviewed Article:

The Ancient Magic of Malt: Making Malt Sugars and Ale from Grain Using Traditional Techniques

By doing these mashing experiments I realised that making malt sugars was, potentially, a grain processing technique that dates back to the first farmers of the Fertile Crescent, thousands of years ago. I demonstrated that a container is not necessary to make tasty malt sugars from malted grain. The basic and simple technique of gentle heating on hot stones and making sweet malt cakes and biscuits would precede pottery, possibly even going back to the Natufian era of the epi-palaeolithic. Making malt and malt sugars was one of the reasons for the origin of grain agriculture.