What is malt, and why does it make milk, bread and beer taste so good?

No joke: I am not kidding you when I say last week I got a milkshake, thought aloud “I really wish they had malt, it would’ve been even better”. My husband ask “what is malt anyways?”. I said “I actually have no idea, let me google it.” I found the answer (although it wasn’t particularly satisfying) and told him what I found out and topped it off with “I wish Adam had a video on it”. And slightly more than a week later, here we are. Truly amazing.

"I love them both like my children." cuts to cooking his plant babies in the oven

10:18 You just gave me a "eureka" moment as to why my hands sometimes feel a little puffy/painful after I knead dough and why other times I'm fine. I usually get two brands of all-purpose flour, and after watching this I checked their labels. One contains malted barley flour and the other doesn't. I think I had reactions whenever I just happened to grab the bag with the malt! So thank you, Adam, this was really helpful! 😄

In Central Asia we keep the ancient tradition of celebrating Navruz, kinda like new year but in 21st of March. The main dish is what we call Sumalyak. It is ground malt boiled in a very big open fire pot. It takes the whole neighborhood to prepare Sumalyak and about 10-14 hours until its completion, and you have to stir it constantly which is why it can’t be done just by a single person. I really like this tradition, I think it makes people have higher sense of belonging to their community and is overall a pretty fun thing to do with people in your neighborhood

That is my former organic professor! I graduated this May with a degree in biochemistry from Maryville College. I can't say that I always had as much fun in Dr. Duncan's class like Adam did trying out malt lol, but he is a great professor that I learned a great deal from. Glad to see he's doing great in his brewing!

As a trained brewer/malter i have to say that's a very educational and highly accurate explanation of the topic. Very nice

I went through a "malt every grain in sight" phase some years ago. Also made bread for many years. One day I added a tablespoon of ground up wheat malt to the bread dough just to see what would happen. Of course it absolutely RUINED the dough. The amylase took no time to break down all the starch in the dough. Baking what remained resulted in a bread brick - just a lump of baked gluten that was hard enough to break your teeth. Today I've learned to roast the malt first to eliminate its diastatic properties. :)

Small disclaimer: you can't use any whole grain cereal for it. In fact, you can't use most. It has to be a cereal that produces amylase when it germinates, as Dr. Duncan mentions. For example, barley and wheat. Rice and corn don't do that. I don't know about other grains like oats, but it seems glutenous cereals can typically be malted.

I kinda love how complicated literally everything is once you dig a little beneath the surface!

"In the babies go, to die in the oven" Thank you Adam, very cool

I’m from the Isle of Islay where we have 9 whisky distilleries including Laphroaig which you showed. In the village of Port Ellen there’s a huge building known as “The Maltings”. The barley is shipped in then driven from the pier where it’s then processed and driven to the distilleries. As a result of this video is is now no longer a mystery to me what goes on in there. The smell from the kiln chimneys is very distinctive and is almost part of the common identity of the people of port Ellen.

I have loved the taste of malted milk balls and malted milkshakes ever since I was a kid. It's interesting to finally learn where that comes from (only took me 46 years to find out).

my nephew calls Whoppers "yummy circles," and I'm just so used to calling them that now that I saw the Squarespace ad coming, I was like, "ah yes Whoppers- yummy circles, circles to square Squarespace. this is transitioning to a Squarespace ad." and I was right! not really the way you got to it but heh thought I would share idk

I love that Adam is wearing a Tennessee t-shirt in this video. He's already morphing. Soon he'll be wearing white rhinestone boots and going into a skeptical record producer's office before blowing his mind with his dulcet tones.

I always wanted to know what malt was and I find it extremely interesting after all these years that malt is in beer whiskey and my favorite a chocolate malt I had no clue that malt in alcoholic beverages bread and a chocolate malt came from the same place. Absolutely incredible ! And thank you for your wonderful work. You’re presentation is highly professional and easy to understand.

Yes, us brits always refer to the malt drink as Horlicks, never malted milk, though the latter is obviously a more correct descriptor. Whoppers are Maltesers here! My fascination with malt is through my brewing of beer. Malt is only second to yeast in fascination for me. Both miraculous in their own way in terms of what they produce.

Adam: "Horlicks is a terrible name for a food" Spotted Dick:" Looks away awkwardly"

I was literally watching The Great British Baking show yesterday. They had to make "malt loaf" (the most British sounding name for a food I've ever heard), and I asked myself "what exactly is malt? Like, I know it's a thing used in beer and baking, but what is it really?" This was yesterday. Adam, did you read my mind?

As a studying chemist... I approve of the accuracy. Thank you for another great video!

I've worked in a whisky distillery for over 4 years as a tour guide and now I finally understand the whole malting process and the real reasoning behind why we malt barley. Thanks for educating me 😂