Galland Introduces Pneumatic Malting Boxes

In 1873, Belgian engineer Nicolas Galland constructed an early pneumatic malting system at Maxéville near Nancy, France. Instead of spreading germinating barley in a thin layer across a traditional malting floor, Galland placed it in a deeper rectangular box with a perforated base. Conditioned air was forced through the grain bed to regulate its temperature and supply the oxygen required for germination. Galland’s system was pneumatic but not yet fully mechanical: workers still had to turn the grain by hand to prevent the growing rootlets from becoming entangled. Even with this limitation, the deeper aerated beds reduced the space required for germination and pointed toward larger, more controlled malting plants. Galland’s boxes became an important precursor to the later Saladin system, which combined pneumatic aeration with mechanical equipment for turning the malt.