Grain is prepared for cooking and mashing by grinding hammer mill. The degree of grinding between a fine grind, which has a high represents a compromise fermentation and a coarse grind, which aids recovery of economically important non-fermentable by products. Further preparation of the grains and malt varies according to the desired product characteristics. The usual practice is to prepare a slurry of the milled grains using deal coholized beer(backset stillage from a previous cycle. A portion of the malt, usually 1-5%, is added at this stage(premalting). This promotes liquefaction of the starch through enzyme activity during the earlier stages of cooking and improves the efficiency of cooking. There is also degradation of proteins to and amino acids. Both batch and continuous cooking are in use and some distilleries continue to use at atmospheric pressure at ca. 100 C, which is