Making a dent in corn varieties for whiskey

It’s been a few years since Will Glazik concluded his North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) grant titled “Exploring Flavor & Yield of Heirloom Corn Varieties for Spirit Production.” But he’s still taking the time to share the results with the farming community.

Glazik and his three siblings own Silver Tree Beer & Spirits, a farm-to-glass distillery located in Paxton, IL. Glazik grows the certified-organic grains used in their vodka and whiskies on the family’s fifth-generation operation, Cow Creek Organic Farm. Their website states, “The best drinks aren’t just made, they’re grown.”

The siblings launched the value-added business in 2017. At first, they contracted with a local distillery to turn their grains into spirits but have since opened their own production facility and tasting room.

The purpose of Glazik’s SARE grant was to study how different varieties of heirloom corn affect the color and flavor of varietal whiskies.

Glazik contracted with local growers to plant 100 lbs. each of five open-pollinated heritage corn varieties selected for their range of colors and flavors: ‘Bloody Butcher,’ ‘Floriani Red,’ ‘Amaithea White,’ ‘Blue Hybrid’ and ‘Wapsie Valley.’

As a control, Glazik selected #2 yellow dent corn. According to him, most whiskey is made from this variety, but he queried in his grant, “Is it making the best tasting whiskey? Probably not.”

Additionally, he said growing thousands upon thousands of acres of yellow dent corn certainly doesn’t foster biodiversity, soil health, wildlife habitat or many of the other positive ecological impacts of a more varied crop rotation.

Post-harvest, he took the grains to the University of Illinois Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory where they produced an unaged, clear spirit (called a white distillate) from each corn variety. This allowed for direct comparison of how the different corn types influenced the base flavor profile.

“They were very meticulous about making sure that a lot of the practices were standardized across all the different flavors,” said Glazik.

Once the white distillates were finished, they brought in expert tasters including farmers, craft distillers and distributors for evaluation. The tasting was conducted as a double-blind study where neither the servers nor the tasters knew which corn variety they were evaluating.

The most interesting results to Glazik came from asking the testers to describe each variety. Different varieties produced distinctly different flavor profiles. “It was super different across the spectrum as we looked at all these spirits,” said Glazik.

For example, ‘Floriani Red’ was described as “clean, crisp, apple/fruit skin, sugary cereal,” whereas ‘Wapsie Valley’ was “buttery, earthy, grass/hay, caramel corn and clove.”

There was, however, an unexpected finding. When Glazik initially thought about this project, he did not expect that the sensory panel of experts would prefer the yellow dent corn whiskey as much as many of them did. To him, this was an important reminder of the amount of effort and persistence that is required to change the status quo.

He recommended that growers selling to distilleries understand the market before adding heirloom grains to their crop plans. And that value-added distilleries should understand what their customers demand in terms of color and flavor profile.

As is often the case with scientific inquiry, one question leads to another. Another outcome of this SARE grant is that Glazik is interested in best uses for the grains that remain after the distilling process. Currently, they are fed to hogs or composted. Glazik, however, is interested in separating the grains from the liquids.

The grains would still feed livestock, but Glazik would take the liquids – which are high in nutrients – and adjust the pH to neutral. Then, he would use the liquids as a foliar application on his grain crops.

“And you see if that has a noticeable impact on crop growth and yield production in organic operations because nutrition is always such a limiting factor in organic grain production,” he said.

by Sonja Heyck-Merlin