ISSUE 85, SPIRITS, Part 4: Sorghum Whiskey
Sorghum Whiskey & Sucrat
Sorghum came into the United States from South Africa in the 1850s—15 varieties shipped fro South Africa by sugar planter Lawrence Ray to Governor Hammond of South Carolina. A tall grass, related loosely to sugar cane, Sorghum bicolor grew sturdy canes with a bushy seed head surmounting the stalks. In South Africa the seeds were used as a food source, often milled into a flour, or the seeds boiled in a porridge. Sorghum seed proved fermentable, and sorghum beer remains a favorite consumer beverage. Wray had read the chemical analysis of the cane juice by a French chemist testing Chinese sorghum and realized it was sufficiently high to serve as a sugar substitute if processed. So he sought out the sweet cane varieties to ship to Carolina for test plantings.
For most of the 1850s sorghum was an experimental plant, grown by only a few adventurous farmers. Their plantings established one consequential virtue of the plant: it was great more cold tolerant that the hardiest strain of sugar cane (purple ribbon), and could be grown as far north as the Michigan border. The experimental farmers also established the major liability of sorghum: the starch structure of the cane juice prevented it from granulating like processed cane sugar. As a sweetener it could only manage becoming a syrup. Despite intensive promotion by the U.S. government, and much discussion in the agricultural press, it remained marginal until the Civil War thrust it into notice. The North of course turned away from the import of New Orleans sugar and molasses with the outbreak of hostilities. But after the fall of Vicksburg, the transport of Louisiana sugar halted through the Confederacy as well. Instantly sorghum became a universal home grown sweetener. And also the source for spirits—whether derived from juice like rum agricole from sugar cane, or from seed based beer. The former earned an odd name: sucrat. The latter became plain “sorghum spirits” or sometimes sorghum whiskey if the sorghum mash was mingled with corn. Some producers during the war gained a commercial footing, particularly in the border states. The editor of the Easton MD Gazette thanked the rising local distiller for his Christmas present of a gallon in 1864.
The world of spirits underwent a transformation in the mid-19th century. The fruit brandies (apple jack, peach brandy, grape brandy) that dominated the early 19th were supplanted by corn and rye based spirits: whiskey, bourbon, rye. Rum which had stood at the center of the 18th-century punch bowl sociability, retained some footing in American drinking until the 1830s before receding into secondary status. Sucrat and Sorghum Spirits were novelties occasioned by the War. In the post war era they suffered from the associations with deprivation (think okra seed coffee), and so sorghum-based alcohol shifted from central to marginal in production. Still, the ability to grow the sweet stalks in northern states kept both the plant in the field and the syrup bottle on the home table, particularly among country people and the poorer sort. In distilling sorghum became an adulterant in the eyes of the legal spirits crowd. Moonshiners found it useful. Consider this 1908 blurb about South Carolina home made “whiskey” published in the Atlanta Journal on March 14:P
Prohibition—from 1919 to 1934—revived a popular interest in using sorghum as a basis of distilling. In the untrammeled way that hooch producers outside the law conceived their art, they began experimenting in mixed batch (sorghum + corn + molasses) productions. The outcomes of these experiments became the received wisdom passed down in parts of the United States under blue laws where illicit stills operated. The corn strains, sorghum strains, and formulas became family property passed through generations until the end of the 20th century.
The artisan distilling boom of the past decade romanticized the work of these shine families, and sought to revive the open-minded sense of possibility in formulating mash. There were several experiments in sorghum spirits. AEppleTreow Winery of Burlington, WI, launched “Brown Dog Sorghum Spirits” in 2010. The name references the classic moonshiner monikers for raw distilled spirits: white dog, or brown dog, depending on the desired colored (molasses turned the spirits brown quickly).
Scott Blackwell and Anne Marshall of High Wire Distillery in Charleston issued “Sorghum Whiskey” a decade ago, albeit produced more like a sucrat on the rum agricole model since it used Muddy Pond Sorphum Syrup as a base. It was the first of High Wire’s efforts to employ southern heirloom ingredients as the basis of spirits. Perhaps the label “Whiskey” is a misnomer. But do you think anyone would buy anything categorized as “sucrat” [pronounced suck rat]?