Photo: Kyle Pearce (Flickr) Along with wheat, rice, corn and
potatoes, barley is one of the world’s largest food crops. Two
hundred twenty million tons of barley are grown worldwide each
year! But most of this bountiful food crop never makes it to the
table as food. Instead, the majority of the world’s barley
harvest is destined for beer production. Today’s program
explores how amber waves of grain are turned into amber waves of
beer. To make beer, barley grains are steeped in water just
until they germinate. The process is arrested by drying the
grains, which are then cracked to expose the germinated seed.
Germinated, dried barley is what’s known to beermakers as malt.
Breweries soak malt in warm water to activate enzymes that
convert the barley’s carbohydrates to simple sugars. These
sugars give the liquid drained off the malt its name: sweet
liquor. Sweet liquor is then boiled with hops, a perennial, viny
plant which adds flavor and aroma to the beer, and also acts as
a preservative. After the malt and hop