The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (19 page)
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Authors: Amy Stewart
Tags: #Non-Fiction
SUGAR BEET
Beta vulgaris
chenopodiaceae (goosefoot family)
In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte found himself in a bit of a bind. He'd issued an order, known as the Berlin Decree, banning the importation of any British goods. That meant no tea, no warm British wool, no indigo dye, and no sugar for the people of France. At that time, most sugarcane production in the Caribbean was under British control. Knowing that this would be a disaster for Parisian pastry chefs, Napoleon hatched a plan to refine sugar from beets.
He turned to botanist Benjamin Delessert to develop a method. Soon there were six experimental stations operating around France, with a hundred students learning the process. Farmers were required to plant thousands of acres in beets. Forty factories were pumping out over three million pounds of sugar. In 1811, Napoleon wrote that the British could throw their sugarcane into the Thames, because Europe would have no further use for it. But after his exile, the political winds shifted again, and sugarcane came back to France.
The modern sugar beet is a hefty, white variety grown for its high sucrose contentâ18 percent, which is higher than most sugarcane. It can grow to a foot long and weigh five pounds. A close relative of chard and amaranth, the beet is probably native to the Mediterranean, where it emerged as a more domesticated form of the wild sea beet,
Beta vulgaris
subsp.
maritima,
also called wild spinach. Although botanists developed a method for boiling it to make a sweet syrup in the late sixteenth century, it wasn't used as a sweetener until varieties had been bred that contained higher sugar levels. That breakthrough, along with technological advances and sheer necessity, finally made it possible to extract a reasonable amount of sugar from a beet.
Today a quarter of the world's sugar supply comes from beets, with the United States, Poland, Russia, Germany, France, and Turkey leading the way. Fifty-five percent of the sugar produced in the United States comes from sugar beets, mostly grown in the upper Midwest
and western states. America consumes all the sugar it grows and imports more, mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean, to satisfy its sweet tooth.
The process is similar to that of sugarcane. The juice is extracted with hot water rather than a mill, but after that, it is filtered, heated, and the sugar crystals are separated from the molasses. The sugar extracted from beets is identical to that of sugarcane, but the molasses is different: beet molasses is bitter and unpalatable because of the non-sugar residues left behind. It can be fed to livestock and has even been sprayed on icy roads to help the salt stick.
Of interest to drinkers, however, is the fact that beet molasses is sold to commercial producers of yeast, who mix it with cane molasses to provide a sugary medium for large-scale yeast cultivation. After being raised on molasses, the yeast is filtered, compressed, and sent out to breweries, distilleries, and bakeries. So in a way, all alcohol begins with beet sugar.
Some spirits are produced from beet sugar, although it may not be obvious: so-called rectified spirits or neutral spirits can be made from beet sugar and used as a base in liqueurs or to adjust the proof of a spirit. Orange liqueurs like triple sec, and many brands of absinthe and pastis, are made with a beet sugar alcohol base. And around the world, a few rums are made from beet sugar, including the Swedish Altissima and the Austrian Stroh 80. Craft distilleries in the United States have attempted it as well. Michigan's Northern United Brewing Company makes a version of rum based on beet sugar, and Wisconsin's Old Sugar Distillery distills an anise-flavored ouzo and a honey liqueur from beet sugar.
WHEAT
Triticum aestivum
poaceae (grass family)
A
s one of the oldest cereal grains, wheat would seem like the logical candidate for the title of most ancient and primary beer ingredient. It was domesticated over ten thousand years ago in the Middle East and arrived in China by 3000 BC. As a food source, it has everything going for it: protein, flavor, durability, and a wonderful elasticity that allows bread to rise. But some of the very qualities that make it good to eat also make it difficult to ferment. In fact, brewers and distillers consider it one of the trickier ingredients to work with.
To understand this problem, think about it from the plant's perspective. A grain of any kind is, of course, a seed; it represents the plant's next generation, its shot at immortality. To ensure the seed's success, the plant stores sugar next to the embryo in the form of starch. But sugar alone is not enough: a seedling needs protein, too. So embedded within the starch is a matrix of protein. When the seed drops to the ground and gets a little damp, enzymes go to work busting apart that starch so that the seedling will have some sugar to eat. But first, they have to get past the protein.
Wheat is particularly good at taking up nitrogen, one of the building blocks of protein. Those wheat proteins are fairly flexible in the sense that they'll take extra nitrogen when they can get it. That makes for a strong matrix wrapped around the starch. This is good news for bakers: a healthy amount of protein makes a great loaf of bread. Those wheat proteins come together in the presence of water to form glutenâthat sticky, stretchy stuff so important in dough.
That's why farmers, for thousands of years, have selected strains of wheat that are high in protein and eager to take up nitrogen. Their selection process, however, is not as beneficial for brewers. In a brewer's mash, the starch is so tightly bound up in the protein matrix that some of it is inaccessible. The equation is simple: more nitrogen means more protein, which means less sugar and therefore less alcohol. Complicating matters is the fact that wheat can get gummy in a mash tub, and the stray bits of protein left behind after fermentation make the brew cloudy.
BUCKWHEAT
Buckwheat (
Fagopyrum esculentum
) is not wheat at all,
but a flowering plant in the knotweed family. It is closely related to dock and sorrel, two wild European herbs. The dark, triangular seeds are enclosed in a hull that makes up about a fourth of the seed's bulk. When the hull is removed, what's left is called a buckwheat groat.
In addition to its use as flour in pancakes and noodles, and in cereal (such as European kasha), buckwheat is used in Japan to make the spirit shochu, and it's turning up in vodkas and in beers as a gluten-free alternative. The French Distillerie des Menhirs makes what it claims is the world's only buckwheat whiskey, called Eddu Silver.
So even though wheat went into ancient brews, it was never used alone. Egyptians mixed their wheat with barley, sorghum, and millet to come up with a more workable recipe. A fine wheat beer tradition developed in Germany, starting in the Middle Ages, but even those beers consisted of only about 55 percent wheat, with barley making up the rest of the grain. Russian distillers made early vodkas from a mixture of wheat, barley, and rye, and Scotch and Irish whiskey makers perfected the art of making whiskey from a similar blend, with a little corn added. Without the help of those other grains, wheat would not make much of a drink.
Why bother with wheat at all, if it is so difficult to work with? Try a German
Hefeweizen
and you'll have your answer. There's a definite bread and biscuit aroma that is impossible not to love. Wheat is also smooth and round and easygoing. It settles in happily with the other flavors around it. German wheat beers are known for their spicy, citrusy character; this comes not so much from the hops but from special strains of yeast that go to work on those wheat sugars and produce their own unique flavors. Those beers are also known for their thick, foamy head, which is mostly dissolved wheat protein. Many brewers add a touch of wheat to their grain mixture just for the foam.
In vodka and whiskey, wheat makes for a light, smooth spirit, and this can be a wonderful thing. Any number of bourbon drinkers will say that they've tasted all kinds of fancy bourbons but keep returning to Maker's Mark. Why? It's the wheat. Most bourbon contains a little rye in addition to corn and barley, but Maker's uses wheat instead of rye. That smooth, sweet flavor, quite different from the spicy bite of rye, explains why Maker's is such a crowd-pleaser. The influence of wheat is even more obvious in some of the new American “straight wheat” whiskies, in which wheat makes up at least 51 percent of the blend. And the sheer palatability of wheat is still more evident in three of the world's most popular vodkas: Grey Goose, Ketel One, and Absolut.
Until recently, the needs of brewers and distillers were ignored by wheat farmers. Planting a hard, high-protein wheat, and feeding it plenty of nitrogen, is a good strategy for a farmer who wants to feed the world. But if the farmer wants a nice glass of whiskey at the end of the day, putting in a few fields of soft wheat would help. Wheat varieties are distinguished by growing season (winter vs. spring), by color (amber, red, or white), and by protein content, with soft wheat being lower in protein. Now plant breeders are more focused on breeding low-protein varieties, and farmers who want to grow for brewers are using less nitrogen fertilizer in their fields. Wheat for brewing and distilling might make up only a small fraction of the 689 million tons produced around the world, but without it, beer, whiskey, and vodka wouldn't be the same.