The Steeping of Barley and the So-Called Saturation Point

It is claimed that the Avery Saturation Tester enables the so-called " saturation point" corresponding to the optimum duration of the steeping process, to be determined with accuracy and facility.As, however, the indications given by this instrument, and the phenomena to which they am related raise some important questions, and in some respects may appear to run counter to accepted views, 1 have ventured to attempt rather more than merely to describe the new instrument and sub stantiate the claims made on its behalf.The steeping of malting barley involves much more than the mere imbibition of water by the grain.On that point all modern scientific workers are agreed.I suggest that to-day we ought to regard steeping from the natural history standpoint; that is to say, we should recognise in it an artificial reproduction of nature's methods in the preliminary preparation of barley corns to enable them to germinate.Steeping, as practised, is indeed an artificial device.TJie natural environment of grain lying in moist aerated soil is only imperfectly reproduced.But then, the conditions under which germination and incipient growth take place on the malting floor are different from those obtaining in nature.Hence it may be argued that the process preparatory to floor-growth, namely, steeping, need not necessarily be an exact copy of the corresponding natural process.In essentials, however, it must reproduce nature's process, because the grain has to bo prepared as completely as possible for the next stage in its life's history, growth.We must, therefore, think of steeping as involving all those changes and conditionings which precede germination.So far from being a mere sopping-up of water, steeping is a manifold and probably extremely complex process involving vital, chemical, and physical phenomena which are at present obscure.