Whiskey devotees aren’t usually looking for cocktails loaded with simple syrups and added flavorings, but they certainly appreciate the natural, understated sweetness in a fine bourbon. Even ardent bourbon purists acknowledge sweetness as an inherently desirable, defining characteristic setting bourbon apart from other whiskeys. How that sweet touch slips into the barrel, bottle, and eventually your glass, isn’t rocket science; it instead arrives via of one of the most long-lived crops in the history of the Americas: Corn.
In fact, a whiskey isn’t legally a bourbon unless corn is the primary grain in its mash. U.S. federal law dictates that at least 51% of the grains used to distill bourbon must come from corn, and many distillers far surpass than percentage. That’s why it’s inherently sweeter than standard whiskeys. The corn is also responsible for additional traits such as the smooth body and flavor notes of creamy butterscotch, caramel, and vanilla. Other grains completing the mash aren’t regulated, but typically include wheat for a touch more sweetness, rye for a spicy kick, and barley, which is often malted for a flavor tinge of nuts and smoke. All those flavors in bourbon get underlying woody notes from another legal requirement: all bourbon must be stored in new barrels made of charred oak.
Since corn is a major farm crop in Kentucky, which produces most of the world’s bourbon, it’s a match made in whiskey heaven. However, there’s a very specific type of corn making its mark on your favorite bottle of bourbon.
A certain kind of corn creates the bourbon magic
What we know as “sweet corn,” the most common type for everyday eating, would seem the natural choice for creating the sweetness in bourbon — but that’s far from reality. It takes a different kind of corn for a good whiskey mash. Of the six types of corn grown for commercial use in America, the most bountiful is dent corn, sometimes called field corn — and that’s what the vast majority of bourbon distillers use.
Dent corn gets its moniker from the dimpled indentations occuring as the corn ripens in the field. That’s opposed to sweet corn, the kind we grill, smear with butter, and eat on the cob in renditions such as Mexican street corn. Sweet corn gets harvested much earlier, while dent corn hardens into a grain-like consistency for feeding animals, making ethanol, incorporating into food production, and imaking bourbon.
Yellow dent corn has long been the viable and affordable option for distilling bourbon, but there’s nothing mandating that. Distillers are free to use other types of corn, as long as they are genuine corn, per bourbon regulations. The corn selection process for making bourbon can be individualized, as some innovative bourbon distillers are experimenting with. They ponder the vast commercial production of dent corn, questioning whether it dilutes flavor that could enhance and differentiate individual bourbon brands. Heirloom corn crops are inching into that void, though growing them is a notoriously costly endeavor.
