There’s a drink (very popular) in Venezuela that’s called “malta” (I believe that the translation is malt).
I heard from a friend that in Argentina there’s no malt production, and he was amazed of the product when he came to Caracas.
Just as there’s no Dr. Pepper (only imported) here, I believe that there’s no malt in the USA (only imported).
I wondered…
In Scotland, they drink malt whisky. 
There are several domestic non-alcoholic malt beverages in the U.S., such as O’Douls, produced by Budweiser. Coors and Miller also produce varieties. I’m not sure if there are any that are very similar to Malta (very popular in Panama, by the way), which is very dark. In any case, they aren’t terribly popular, certainly not the way Malta is.
Some of the stores around here sell malt soda. I think one brand is called Malta Huey. I’m not sure if that’s the same stuff you mean or not. The only person I ever knew who drank it was an old co-worker of mine from Nigeria. I’m sure I’ve tried it at some point, but never got into the habit of drinking it.
Malta Hatuey, I think. I couldn’t find out if it was made in the U.S. or imported though.
Malta is basically unfermented beer. Very tasty, sweet, non-alcoholic.
Malta India is manufactured in Puerto Rico (in other words, not imported).
According to Chambers English Dictionary, malt is “barley or other grain steeped in water, allowed to sprout and dried in a kiln”. I kind of knew that without checking; I think the important part is the sprouting; it must make some important difference to the flavour, or something.
When the seed sprouts it starts breaking down its starch into sugar, which is why it tastes different.
When I worked as a teenager at a supermarket in a neighborhood with a heavy Puerto Rican population (in Holyoke, Massachusetts), they had several brands of malta available: Malta Goya, Malta India, Malta Vitarroz, Malta Iberia, and Malta El Sol, to name a few that I remember. I tried it, and it wasn’t terrible. It’s not something I’d have again, though. Sweet and yeasty is the way I’d describe it. I suppose I can see why some people like it.
(Boy, that first sentence has lots of prepositional phrases.) 
And is essential for making any beer.
At least in the India brewery, this is what happened:
The processes of making malta and beer are very similar, up until the fermentation part. It is possible (I don’t remember all the details) that the malta would be left for sprouting longer than the beer. Beer (or the forerunner of it) goes to fermentation and later a much quicker pasteurization process. Malta does not go thru fermentation, and its pasteurization requires more time. They used the same (well, same kind) of containers and machinery to make both products.
I wish I could search for my school report, but that is a thousand or so miles away. I’ll try to come up with some more information.
Ok… here’s my take on malt, malta and beer.
Like ** G. Odoreida ** said, malt’s sprouted barley that gets kilned to stop its growth past a certain point. This turns the insoluble starch into soluble starch. This is called malting.
Once it’s malted & dried/kilned, it’s then ground up and steeped in hot water (roughly 150 F/66 C), which activates the enzymes in the malt. These enzymes convert that soluble starch into sugars- primarily maltose. This stage is called mashing
After mashing, the water is run off and the malt is rinsed with more hot water to get all the sugar out.
At this point, you have a lot of hot sugary water called “wort”. My guess is that the malta producers flavor, bottle and pasteurize this wort as-is, leaving a sweet drink.
Beer brewers go ahead and boil this wort with hops and then ferment it with yeast.
Yes bump, that’s what they do…
Malta Hatuey! I couldn’t remember that, but I was thinking “Malta Huey” didn’t sound right, since “huey” is kind of a rude-sounding word in some versions of Spanish. To my gringo ears, at least, “Malta Huey” sounds kind of like “Bastard Soda.”
Specifically a sugar known as maltose.