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Brewers can make better beer by letting computers eavesdrop on their
barley-milling process. Milling produces malt by grinding germinated
barley—but the malt must be free of ungerminated seeds. Currently, this
can only be checked by sending vat samples away for lengthy analysis. But Robert
Muller of Brewing Research International in Surrey has a better idea: he feeds
the grinding sound of milling into a PC. He has calibrated acoustical-analysis
software to reveal, in real time, how much barley is unmalted. “The quieter it
is, the less ungerminated barley,” says Muller. Best of all, it ensures better
beer first time,…