Working from the non-reducing end, β-amylase catalyzes the hydrolysis of the second α-1,4 glycosidic bond, cleaving off two glucose units (maltose) at a time.

In beer and some liquors, the sugars present at the beginning of fermentation have been produced by "mashing" grains or other starch sources (such as potatoes).

Different temperatures optimize the activity of alpha or beta amylase, resulting in different mixtures of fermentable and unfermentable sugars.

In selecting mash temperature and grain-to-water ratio, a brewer can change the alcohol content, mouthfeel, aroma, and flavor of the finished beer.

In some historic methods of producing alcoholic beverages, the conversion of starch to sugar starts with the brewer chewing grain to mix it with saliva.

Yeast then feeds on these simple sugars and converts it into the waste products of ethanol and carbon dioxide.

Modern breadmaking techniques have included amylases (often in the form of malted barley) into bread improver, thereby making the process faster and more practical for commercial use.

A higher than normal concentration may reflect any of several medical conditions, including acute inflammation of the pancreas (which may be measured concurrently with the more specific lipase),[12] perforated peptic ulcer, torsion of an ovarian cyst, strangulation, ileus, mesenteric ischemia, macroamylasemia and mumps.

The modern history of enzymes began in 1833, when French chemists Anselme Payen and Jean-François Persoz isolated an amylase complex from germinating barley and named it "diastase".

In 1862, Russian biochemist Aleksandr Yakovlevich Danilevsky [ru] (1838–1923) separated pancreatic amylase from trypsin.

Large polymers such as starch are partially hydrolyzed in the mouth by the enzyme amylase before being cleaved further into sugars.

This has happened independently in mice, rats, dogs, pigs, and most importantly, humans after the agricultural revolution.

[20] Following the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago, human diet began to shift more to plant and animal domestication in place of hunting and gathering.

One event allowed it to evolve salivary specificity, leading to the production of amylase in the saliva (named in humans as AMY1).

Therefore, it is most likely that the benefit of an individual possessing more copies of AMY1 in a high starch population increases fitness and produces healthier, fitter offspring.

[22] This fact is especially apparent when comparing geographically close populations with different eating habits that possess a different number of copies of the AMY1 gene.