The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (16 page)

Rye whiskey can have an edge to it. Pliny described the flavor as bitter, but it might be more accurate to call it spicy or robust. While rye whiskey might have once had a reputation as a cheap, rotgut spirit, sophisticated distillation techniques and the wondrous quality of wood maturation mean that some of the best whiskies on the market today are predominantly rye.

The grain is also an ingredient in some German and Scandinavian beers, and American craft distillers are using it as well. Rye has always been a base ingredient for Russian and eastern European vodkas; now American vodka distillers use it, too. Square One vodka is made entirely from organic Dark Northern and other North Dakota rye varieties. Rather than seek out the more flavorful bread-quality varieties, the distillery tends to choose ryes based on starch content, and some of those are the same varieties grown as cattle feed. “All we really want is the starch molecule,” said owner Allison Evanow. “The nutty flavor is not as important in a distilled clear spirit.” One problem she encountered: bugs. “If they grow it for feed, it's normal to leave more bugs in it,” she said. “We had to reject one supplier because there were too many grasshoppers in the grain.”

Rye growers face another challenge: the grain is vulnerable to a fungus called ergot (
Claviceps purpurea
). The spores attack open flowers, pretending to be a grain of pollen, which gives them access to the ovary. Once inside, the fungus takes the place of the embryonic
grain along the stalk, sometimes looking so much like grain that it is difficult to spot an infected plant. Until the late nineteenth century, botanists thought the odd dark growths were part of the normal appearance of rye. Although the fungus does not kill the plant, it is toxic to people: it contains a precursor to LSD that survives the process of being brewed into beer or baked into bread.

While a psychoactive beer might sound appealing, the reality was quite horrible. Ergot poisoning causes miscarriage, seizures, and psychosis, and it can be deadly. In the Middle Ages, outbreaks called St. Anthony's fire or dancing mania made entire villages go crazy at once. Because rye was a peasant grain, outbreaks of the illness were more common among the lower class, fueling revolutions and peasant uprisings. Some historians have speculated that the Salem witch trials came about because girls poisoned by ergot had seizures that led townspeople to conclude that they'd been bewitched. Fortunately, it's easy to treat rye for ergot infestation: a rinse in a salt solution kills the fungus.

SORGHUM

Sorghum bicolor

poaceae (grass family)

O
n February 21, 1972, President Nixon, his staff, and members of the American media attended a banquet in Peking to mark the beginning of Nixon's historic trip to China. The ceremonial drink that night was
mao-tai,
a sorghum spirit with an alcohol content over 50 percent. Alexander Haig had sampled the drink on an advance visit and cabled a warning that “Under no repeat no circumstances should the President actually drink from his glass in response to banquet toasts.” Nixon ignored the advice and matched his host drink for drink, shuddering but saying nothing each time he took a sip. Dan Rather said it tasted like “liquid razor blades.”

Mao-tai
is just one category in the broad class of Chinese sorghum liquors known as
baijiu.
Other grains can be used—millet, rice, wheat, barley—but sorghum has a long history in Asia, where the earliest distilled spirits from the grain were made two thousand years ago.

Why sorghum? It isn't the flavor, certainly:
baijiu
and sorghum beers aren't winning many medals from tasting panels. But sorghum happens to be incredibly drought-tolerant and easy to grow in poor soils. It can wait out periods of stress and bounce back quickly. A thin waxy cuticle keeps the plant from drying out, and natural tannins protect it from insect attacks. Young shoots produce cyanide in response to drought, which is deadly for livestock but protects the plant during a critical time.

Sorghum is, in short, a survivor. This makes it the grain of famines and poverty. It has kept people alive in times when nothing else would grow. Its simple presence in highly populated, poverty-stricken areas around the world make it the default grain for home brews.

Sorghum and millet are often mentioned in the same breath; the reason for this is that “millet” is a catchall term for at least eight different species of grain, including sorghum, that produce panicles, or small seeds in loose clusters. Some millets are called broomcorn; the broom shape is an apt descriptor. Like most millets, sorghum is a dense, tough grass that can grow to fifteen feet.

It originated in northeast Africa around Ethiopia and the Sudan and was domesticated in 6000 BC. Because it was such a useful food source, it spread across Africa, making it to India over two thousand years ago. From there it went to China along silk trading routes. There are over five hundred varieties, broadly categorized as sweet sorghum or grain sorghum. For the purpose of making alcohol, sweet sorghum is better for pressing sugar from the stalks to distill a drink like rum, and grain sorghum is better for beer or whiskey.

The grain is not particularly useful for bread making because it lacks the gluten that allows dough to stretch and rise, but it is used to make traditional flatbreads. The mouthwatering Ethiopian
injera
is made from sorghum or teff, another milletlike grain.

Sorghum's main advantage is that it is high in fiber and B vitamins, supplying much-needed nutrients when food is scarce. Once corn became widespread, this was especially important: an exclusively corn-based diet can cause pellagra, a dangerous and even deadly B vitamin deficiency. Eating corn in combination with sorghum prevents pellagra.

The most practical use of the grain is as a porridge or gruel; for this reason, the first fermented drinks made from sorghum were simply thin porridges allowed to sit for a few days until the alcohol content reached 3 or 4 percent. Traditional African sorghum beers are made today in much the same way they were for thousands of years. The stalks are cut and the grains threshed by beating them on a wooden platform or a grass mat, and then the grains are soaked for a day or two to start the germination process. They are spread out, usually on a mat of green leaves, and covered so they will germinate for a few more days. Enzymes in the grain get to work converting starches to sugar. The malted grains are combined with hot water and ground sorghum, and then are allowed to cool. After a few days of natural fermentation, it might be brought to a boil again and allowed to cool, then more malt is added and the fermentation continues for a few more days. Once the beer is ready, it is only slightly filtered, resulting in a cloudy or opaque drink.

Making sorghum beer is often women's work. International aid groups are reluctant to discourage the practice because it brings in a little money and does give the family some nutrition. Children are given the dregs of sorghum beer to drink; the thick, yeasty remains are low in alcohol, generally free of harmful bacteria, and high in nutrients. In fact, the only real danger presented by sorghum beer comes from the containers used to brew a batch. Some Africans are genetically predisposed to iron overload, and the iron kettles or drums used for brewing, combined with the iron naturally found in sorghum, can result in beer that is dangerously high in iron for them. Unwashed containers that previously held pesticides and other chemicals have also been implicated in accidental beer-related poisonings, but the beer itself was not to blame.

Fifty years ago, this kind of homemade beer represented 85 percent of all alcohol consumed on the African continent, but that's changing quickly. Premade ingredients—sorghum flour, yeast packets, brewing enzymes—are cheap and widely available, as are “just add water” beer mixes. One step up from homemade brews is Chibuku, a fresh sorghum beer sold in cartons. The beer continues to ferment in the carton, so it has to be vented to allow carbon dioxide to escape; otherwise it would explode. One brand, Chibuku Shake-Shake, has been purchased by the global beer conglomerate SABMiller, showing just how much money there is to be made from cloudy, sour sorghum beer.

In fact, SABMiller is working to put sorghum to better use as a beer ingredient. The company has contracted with thousands of farmers in South Africa and other African nations to grow sorghum for its breweries. This allows the company to make bottled “clear beers”
that resemble Western-style beers and sell them locally for less than a dollar each. Home brews can still be made for pennies per serving, but beer companies hope that Africans with just a few dollars to spend will spend some of it on higher-quality beer.