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Malt Tea
Cover one pint of ground malt with three pints of scalded water, not boiling. Steep for two hours and then strain. Add sugar or lemon juice to season. This is excellent for inflammatory fevers.
This is a small mash rather than a tea: hot water held below boiling lets the malt's own enzymes turn its starch into sugar, which is why the drink tastes sweet before any sugar is added. Two points do most of the work here, the water temperature and how long the finished liquid sits around.
- Water temperature is the hinge"scalded water, not boiling" points to water held short of boiling; poured over cool grain it would settle somewhere in the mashing range, and modern practice puts conversion at roughly 145-160F. Cooler water converts more slowly; water at a full boil destroys the enzymes and gives a thin, husky liquid rather than a sweet one.
- What "ground malt" isCrushed malted barley, sold as grist or crushed base malt by homebrew suppliers. It is not malt extract syrup, not malted milk powder, and not the diastatic malt powder sold for bread, none of which behave the same way in this ratio.
- A pint of malt by weightCrushed malt is light and airy; a US pint runs somewhere around 7 to 8 ounces depending on how coarsely it is milled. Volume measures of grain are imprecise by nature, so weigh it if you want repeatable results.
- Two hours in a warm sugary liquidAs sweet wort cools it passes through the range where lactic bacteria and wild yeast thrive, and it may begin to sour and turn cloudy. Bringing the strained liquid to a boil for a minute and chilling it promptly is the sensible modern handling, particularly since the drink was intended for someone already ill.
- StrainingGrain husks are the natural filter. Pour through a fine sieve lined with muslin and let it drain rather than pressing the bed, which pushes silt and astringency through.
- YieldThree pints of water on this much grain, minus what the husks absorb, gives something on the order of two and a half pints of finished drink, or three to four servings. It is best fresh and does not keep.
- The medical claimThere is no evidence that malt tea does anything for "inflammatory fevers." It is a warm, sweet, mildly nourishing drink, which is what invalid cookery of the period was largely for.
Invalid cookery was a fixed department of the household manual, and malt drinks had a settled place in it: barley water, malt extract tonics and "nourishing" unfermented wort were all pressed on the sick and the convalescent through the nineteenth century on the theory that malt carried the strength of beer in digestible form. That thinking is exactly why the recipe turns up in a temperance collection. Unfermented malt liquor was the standard demonstration that anything worth having in a glass of ale could be had without the alcohol. Stopped before yeast is added, a wort is simply sweet grain liquor. The technique itself is the first stage of brewing, unchanged in principle: crushed malt, water held short of boiling, a rest while the enzymes work, then a strain off the husks.