BARLEY Barley is the hardiest and one of the oldest grains in cultivation. It will grow much farther north than wheat; it is a staple crop in Norway, Russia, and Siberia, where it grows right up to the Arctic Circle. This is a grain from which the bread of peasants is made; and people who scorn to eat barley, drink it in the form of ale and beer. The coarse, unleavened barley cakes of Scotland are nutritious, but the grain is lacking in gluten, a very important food element. Barley flour will not make "risen bread" any more than cornmeal will. But it has the whole nutritious grain, minus only the hard cuticle. "Pearl barley" has lost some valuable substance by the processes that grind the kernel to a smooth, polished ball. It is chiefly used in soups and gruels.
The great demand for barley comes from the brewers, who use it in the making of beer. This is the reason it is preferred to other grains: it is quickest to sprout. The sprouting process changes the starch of the kernels into a kind of sugar, called maltose.
The grain is first cleaned, then soaked and spread out in a warm place to sprout. When the little root is two-thirds the length of the grain, the transformation of starch to sugar has been com pleted. The grain is now heated, to kill the grow ing parts and dry the kernels. The process just ended is called the "malting" of the grain. The dry malt may be stored or shipped. Before being used further it is ground into meal, then mixed with water, which soaks out the sugar. The liquid is now strained, and yeast is added to it, to set up fermentation. Alcohol and carbonic acid gas are two substances into which the sugar is trans formed. In the casks, the gas is confined, so that when the beverage is drawn, it is liberated in the bubbles that rise in foam at the top of the mug or glass. The hops used keep the beer from souring.
By the same general process ale and porter are made. Gin and whiskey are made by distilling the alcohol from the light beverages. Beer con tains but 2 per cent. alcohol.
Another fact that makes barley "the brewer's grain," par excellence, is this: it grows in warm as well as cold countries. Turkey and France and California raise a great acreage of this grain for the breweries. "Chevelier," the best variety for brewing, is grown to perfection in the valley land of the Coast Range.
Wild barley has been found growing in western Asia, but whether it escaped from cultivation, or represents a race that never came under the hand of man, it is not possible to decide. It has two rows of kernels in the head — a type that was found in the remains of the civilization of the Lake dwellers, who represent man in the early Stone Age. With it has been found the six-rowed species, which the earliest Egyptian monuments also preserved. A strange fact is that the common four-rowed species is not represented among the barleys grown by these primitive peoples, though both of the more productive species must have originated from the scanty, two-rowed kind.
People who eat barley bread are becoming fewer as the conditions of life are eased. Immigrants from the north of Europe to Minnesota grow barley, first for themselves, but soon for their cattle, only. It is a good 'green forage and pas ture after an early crop is taken off the land. As a catch crop, it is sowed in summer and plowed under. This "green manure" adds to heavy land the fibre that converts it into a mellow loam, easy to work, able to hold moisture, and richer by the addition of plant foods the soil needs.