Chemical and enzymatic characteristics of sorghum malt used for traditional sorghum beer production in Côte d’Ivoire

Malting is the first step in the manufacturing of traditional sorghum beer. The variability of the malting process causes variability of the enzymatic power and technological properties of the malt. At the traditional level, as the duration and conditions of each malting operation strongly depend on the know-how of producers, the malt quality is highly variable from one production to another. In order to give the sorghum beer producers sorghum malt with high and consistent qualities, we report technical knowledge for production of malt. The results showed that the malt produced under controlled conditions had statistically similar moisture content and values were significantly lower (7-9.3%) than those obtained for malt produced under uncontrolled conditions (10-24.8%). In addition, water-soluble and reducing sugar contents were higher in malt produced at laboratory and the optimum pH for amylase activities was detected at pH 6. During malt drying, undried malt alpha amylase specific activity felled to 0.90-3.20 U/mg of protein and the decrease was higher when grains were sun-dried than when they were dried at 45°C in an oven. Thus, to obtain the highest levels of sugars and amylases activities with the lowest moisture contents, malting conditions need to be controlled and optimized.