The Novellie / CSIR Assays: Where Sorghum Malt Science Started
Part of the Evaluation Methods survey.
What it is
The kaffircorn malting and brewing studies — a long series published principally in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture through the 1950s and 60s — built the first systematic laboratory understanding of sorghum malting: how steeping and germination conditions drive amylase development, how malting losses behave (higher than barley's), how moisture during germination raises enzyme activity, and how to assay sorghum malt's diastatic power in the first place. The SDU assay that SABS 235 later codified is this work's direct descendant.
Why it matters — and what it fixed in place
This is genuinely foundational science, done carefully, for a real industry. Its research question was the right one for that industry: opaque beer needs the malt to convert, so the methods measured conversion capacity and the conditions that maximize it. The consequence, sixty years on: nearly every sorghum malt method in existence descends from assays whose organizing premise is enzyme development. Even researchers with no connection to opaque beer inherited instruments that answer "how much enzyme?" better than "how good is this malt for beer?"
The verdict
Respect the foundation; question the inheritance. Our position — external enzymes own conversion, so malt evaluation should measure character — is not a criticism of Novellie's science. It is a recognition that the field kept using instruments long after the question changed.
Source and Validation Notes
Characterized from the published literature record of the CSIR kaffircorn series and later reviews (notably Taylor et al. 2013, doi:10.1002/jib.68). Specific assay procedures are not reproduced here.