Kings of Corn
Design by Alex Povis. Photo by Aaron Ottis.
The wood-fired tank at Wood Hat Spirits in New Florence, Missouri, is hot – very hot. Specifically, 400ºF.
Owner Gary Hinegardner throws about seven buckets of Missouri oak barrel-stave scraps into the tank – it looks like an oversized smoker – each day he’s distilling. The fire heats a paraffin-based food-grade oil; Hinegardner chose it specifically because it doesn’t boil until it hits 625°F. The oil then pumps through coils and heats Wood Hat’s 850-gallon still. Hinegardner likens the setup to the water that pumps through a car engine and radiator.
Today he’s distilling Montgomery County, a bourbon that follows a similar grain bill to leading commercial bourbons, with a bill of 65 percent corn to 35 percent wheat. It’s the only whiskey he makes with yellow No. 2 corn, “the only thing everybody grows out here in Montgomery County,” he says.
Yellow No. 2 is also known as dent corn. You would recognize it easily; it’s used to make animal feed, ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup, tortillas, taco shells and even plastic. It was first developed in 1846 by northern Illinois farmer James L. Reid, who won a prize for the variety at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. (The corn is a hybrid between flint corn and a variety called Gordon Hopkins.)
Hybridization would become increasingly popular in the decades after Reid won his medal, as farmers were unable to resist the improved yields. In 1933, just 1 percent of all corn planted in the U.S. were hybrid varieties. By 1943, that number jumped to 78 percent.
Genetically modified (or GMO) corn was first commercialized in 1996 by Monsanto. Scientists pulled one or more proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, a biological pesticide, and added it to corn. This reduced or eliminated the need for cornfields to be sprayed with pesticides, and again increased corn yields for farmers.
Today, 96.83 percent of corn grown in the U.S. is yellow No. 2, and the big four American distilleries – Jim Beam, Four Roses, Jack Daniels and Maker’s Mark – all use that same corn.
“In the distilling industry, [it’s like] we’re still stuck with Concord grapes; what would happen if the whole wine industry in this United States [only] used Concord grapes?,” Hinegardner says. “And that’s what happens in distilling – they all use yellow No. 2, ‘cause that’s what’s there. If you [want to] use a different corn, you gotta grow it.”
Ralph Haynes first began experimenting with heirloom corn – that is, non-hybridized, open-pollinated varieties – because he wanted to know what Missouri whiskey tasted like in the 19th century.
As co-owner and director of sales and marketing at Pinckney Bend Distillery in New Haven, Missouri, he’s finely attuned to the history of the area. Legend has it that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stopped near Washington, Missouri, and bought a bottle of whiskey in 1806.
“By late afternoon, they stopped at a settlement close to Saint Johns Creek and bought their first whiskey since leaving [on] the Voyage of Discovery,” Haynes says. “They complained bitterly about the price – $8 for two gallons – but no one complained about the quality.”
But what would that whiskey have tasted like? Yellow No. 2 corn hadn’t yet been created in 1806, so Haynes set out to find what corn was growing in Franklin County prior to the 1930s. The cobs and names are much more colorful than yellow No. 2: Wapsie Valley, Blue Hopi, Tennessee Red Cob, Boone County White, Ohio Blue Clarage, Bloody Butcher Red.