thoroughly soaked. This being done, the water is drained from it by little
and little, till it be quite gone. Afterward they take it out, and, laying
it upon the clean floor on a round heap, it resteth so until it be ready
to shoot at the root end, which maltsters call _combing_. When it
beginneth therefore to shoot in this manner, they say it is come, and then
forthwith they spread it abroad, first thick, and afterwards thinner and
thinner upon the said floor (as it _combeth_), and there it lieth (with
turning every day four or five times) by the space of one and twenty days
at the least, the workmen not suffering it in any wise to take any heat,
whereby the bud end should spire, that bringeth forth the blade, and by
which oversight or hurt of the stuff itself the malt would be spoiled and
turn small commodity to the brewer. When it hath gone, or been turned, so
long upon the floor, they carry it to a kiln covered with hair cloth,
where they give it gentle heats (after they have spread it there very thin
abroad) till it be dry, and in the meanwhile they turn it often, that it
may be uniformly dried. For the more it be dried (yet must it be done with
soft fire) the sweeter and better the malt is, and the longer it will
continue, whereas, if it be not dried down (as they call it), but slackly
handled, it will breed a kind of worm called a weevil, which groweth in
the flour of the corn, and in process of time will so eat out itself that
nothing shall remain of the grain but even the very rind or husk.

The best malt is tried by the hardness and colour; for, if it look fresh
with a yellow hue, and thereto will write like a piece of chalk, after you
have bitten a kernel in sunder in the midst, then you may assure yourself
that it is dried down. In some places it is dried at leisure with wood
alone or straw alone, in others with wood and straw together; but, of all,
the straw-dried is the most excellent. For the wood-dried malt when it is
brewed, beside that the drink is higher of colour, it doth hurt and annoy
the head of him that is not used thereto, because of the smoke. Such also
as use both indifferently do bark, cleave, and dry their wood in an oven,
thereby to remove all moisture that should procure the fume; and this malt
is in the second place, and, with the same likewise, that which is made
with dried furze, broom, etc.: whereas, if they also be occupied green,
they are in manner so prejudicial to the corn as is the