the malted grain is mixed with some water and with unmalted but cooked grains—rice, wheat, barley—and the malt enzymes digest the cooked starch granules to produce a sweet slurry. In the final stage, the slurry is extracted with additional water, and the liquid is boiled down to concentrate it. The result is a concentrated syrup of maltose, glucose, and some longer glucose chains. Malt syrup is therefore much less sweet than a similarly viscous sucrose syrup. In Asia it is used to provide color and gloss in savory dishes—for example, it’s painted onto the skin of Peking duck—as well as in confections.