It's all history now

As I was getting our holiday cottage ready for the next and final visitors of the season I realised that here was an opportunity for a blip. The cottage, a one-up, one-down dwelling, was a converted from a much older building that stood to one side of our farmyard. This perforated tile is a reminder of its original function as a small malt house where barley would be prepared for domestic beer production.

Beer would once have been the main drink for the family and for the farm workers and servants. An ancient gentleman of my acquaintance remember it drinking when he worked here. The leftovers would have helped fatten the pigs too.

Malting usually took place in winter; the barley after being steeped in water for about five days was drained and spread evenly on a dry perforated tiled floor for a period varying from twelve to forty-eight hours, where the malted barley was dried over a wood fire. Depending on the temperature, small roots emerge from the grain. From that stage, great care had to be taken; the temperature controlled and the sprouting grain had to be turned at frequent intervals with wooden shovels and rakes.
The green malt was then taken to the kiln, placed on perforated tiles and gently dried by the wood fire lit in the chamber beneath. The heating arrested the growth and gave the malt its unique flavour.

This is one of the characteristic tiles that would have formed the basis of the malting floor. The size (about a foot square) and pattern seems to have been universal. The reticulated underside shown here allowed the heat to pass through via the clusters of small holes on the surface (see fragment below). This is the only intact tile that remains: all the rest seem to have been smashed up when the building was converted and there's no sign of the kiln or anything else, apart from the ghost of an upper storey door through which the grain would have been delivered to the floor above. I've scattered some barley grains on the broken tile and the jug is purely for effect.

The temperance movement in Wales put paid to many farm breweries but the people of Gwaun valley close by resisted change (even clinging to the old style calender to celebrate New Year). There's now a small independent commercial brewery operating again further up the valley, see here.

Part of my reason for this blip is to draw attention to the current invitation to blippers to nominate topics for 5 more groups. I'm keen to have a history group (including family history, archaeology and so on) so if you like this one please add your voice here to the requests for a group for blips relating to past times.