Which corn would you grow?

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MichiganCornhusker
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Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

A friend of mine has a new hobby, growing corn.
He apparently has a choice between two types to plant, Hickory King or Truckers Promise. Open pollinated. I know nothing about this, but thought someone here might. Any advice or info?
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

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Hope this gets lots of responses. I'm in a similar situation!
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

I think he only has the two. Inherited his inlaws place and has a bunch of seed corn. He wants to plant for whiskey. :D
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by ga flatwoods »

forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cornucop/msg0619100618268.htm

l saw a post on this a year or so ago. Maybe TB or PP. Truckers Choice is a good one best I recollect. Hd google came up with nothing.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Truckinbutch »

Bloody Butcher was the only variety I have brought up . Regardless , how can you plant any corn wrong ?
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by jedneck »

Truckinbutch wrote:Bloody Butcher was the only variety I have brought up . Regardless , how can you plant any corn wrong ?
I found bloody butcher seed. And I'm gonna try it. As far as your two choices why not plant both if space permits.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by FullySilenced »

do a google search for:


corn varieties for ethanol production potential and pitfalls

you should find what you want...
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by shadylane »

MichiganCornhusker wrote:A friend of mine has a new hobby, growing corn.
He apparently has a choice between two types to plant, Hickory King or Truckers Promise. Open pollinated. I know nothing about this, but thought someone here might. Any advice or info?
If he has enough room in the garden, and already has the seed corn, plant them both.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Will check into planting both, then could do batch comparisons.
Btw, as you guys prolly already know, it's Truckers Favorite, not promise.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

FullySilenced wrote:corn varieties for ethanol production potential and pitfalls.
I tried this on google but got mostly information about fuel. I'm hoping to use some of the corn to make whiskey.
I'm going to try Ask Jeeves and see if I have better luck.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by FullySilenced »

I really don't think the corn will know if its making fuel or moonshine... are they both not ethanol?

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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by okie »

Make sure it's not Monsanto's GMO seed. Those are roundup ready and have a pesticide in it.

You don't want field corn, you want a corn that makes sugar not protein. Field corn produces more protein.

It's been a while since I've been a sod buster. :crazy:
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

okie wrote:Make sure it's not Monsanto's GMO seed. Those are roundup ready and have a pesticide in it.

You don't want field corn, you want a corn that makes sugar not protein. Field corn produces more protein.

It's been a while since I've been a sod buster. :crazy:
Yeah, that's the whole thing with this. I think this is old school "heirloom" seed, and the place where he is going to plant it is miles from any other farm. I don't know much about it yet, so thanks all for the info! Sounds like he has 1-2 acres to plant. I know this probably isn't cost effective, but he wants to be a "farmer" like I'm a "distiller"
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Truckinbutch »

Tradition here in my area is that the 'Bloody Butcher" seed makes a good sweet corn for the table if harvested early enough and if left to fully mature deliver's an outstanding white corn meal for cornbread or likker . I can attest to the conrbread . Only have antcedotal reports of the quality of mash for stillin .
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Paulinka »

The "Bloody Butcher" reminds to the corn I like best feed for my hens, it is Hungarian heritage open pollinated variety, called "Red Horseteeth". Bigger ears than BB and a bit less karotene/antocyanide content. Gives eggs a deeper brown color, orangish yolk and a yellow flesh for the chickens. Even the sack is painted red where the kernels stored, first time I saw it freaked out as I thought it must be laced with some fungicid by the look of it.
I wonder how the Mexican black corn taste like in a full-corn AG whiskey. Varieties are so delightful.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Looks like we are going to go with Hickory King. Couple acres.
field of dreams.jpg
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by choppinlow »

okie wrote:Make sure it's not Monsanto's GMO seed. Those are roundup ready and have a pesticide in it.

You don't want field corn, you want a corn that makes sugar not protein. Field corn produces more protein. :
That is just not correct at all.

First, many companies other than Monsanto sell GM corn and a great majority of cracked corn people here are buying is GM. Second, round-up ready has nothing to do with "a pesticide in it", it has resistance to the herbicide round-up which is totally different.

And people don't want field corn? Man, don't tell the big US distilleries that. They tend to use a few pounds each year. I think you might have meant starches instead of proteins, but starches are simply storage form of sugars and ferment quite well once converted. Maybe you actually meant protein but I have no idea what you are talking about with that and doubt there is much difference in proteins from either sweet or field corn.

I post little, but there is so much mis-information there I felt compelled to state some facts. Not defending for or against anyone's stance on GM, but you need to know what you are talking about.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by ezlle71 »

Thank you choppinlow, I did want to say something about the gmo thing but did not want to start trouble. You stated it perfectly.
As far as heirloom corn for our purposes, I have been looking at Silver king, Boone Co White, Silvermine, Mosby Prolific and Truckers Favorite on the victory seed website. But i don't know, we grow lots of field corn here. But wanted to try growing some white for whiskey making.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Paulinka »

I plant mostly White Horseteeth this year (2nd on the picture), it has the most starch content of all (Hungarian) heirloom corns, perfectly suits whiskey-making and it is sweet and tasty to eat on the cob. The third is the Red Horseteeth, I buy that one, hens like it better as it has more carotene and vitamines. http://img36.olx.hu/images_aprodhu/4099 ... rev002.jpg
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Old Hippie »

MichiganCornhusker wrote:A friend of mine has a new hobby, growing corn.
Corn's a lot of fun. Also a lot of work, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of frustration occasionally. Makes it a good hobby, that way.

The primary thing to know about corn is: if you're planning to save seed for next year, either grow what everybody else around you is growing, or make sure you have some distance (one mile or two weeks at flowering time) between your corn and theirs.

Since most seed sellers don't sell by the 50-pound bag to home growers, saving seed from the first year is the only way to increase seed for next year.

Most of your neighbours will be growing sweet corn in their gardens or field corn (dent corn) in their fields.

Corn is worse than humans for casually passing its genes around, if you can believe that!

Of the three types of corn -- sweet, flint and dent -- we grow the first two. Flint corns make excellent cornbread, polenta, and *ahem* other cooked corn products.

Our favourite variety of flint is actually three varieties. Cascade Ruby Gold/Maple Gold/Cream Cap are sister strains that give between them four colours of kernel: red, brown, cream/ivory (which we combine with white). There are some subtle differences between them. The white/cream is better for flour, the red for meal and grits, and the brown makes a wonderful gravy thickener. Get them from Carol Deppe at Fertile Valley Seeds in Oregon (though I see she's out of the Cream Cap variety for this year).

Best way to plant them is in adjacent blocks. At harvest, as the old farmers say, "Eat around the edges, save seed in the centre." Corn is wind-pollinated so blocks are better than rows. While these varieties are fairly robust stalkers, a good hard wind or heavy thunderstorm will knock some over. They can lean against other stalks in the blocks and still get support. Put your pole beans downwind and they will never blow over all summer.

Nitrogen is your friend with corn. One of our neighbours cleans out her sheep barn and cattle barn, tills the fresh manure into the ground and plants corn in it first year. Once the corn's done its thing then she plants tomatoes, peppers and onions second year and plants corn in a different spot. (Third year, potatoes...)

Finally, not to really get on the GM controversy -- but I've been hearing for a few years now about "superweeds" that have taken on the Roundup Ready(tm) gene and are nearly impossible to kill. Two acres can be maintained by hand, or cultivated with a garden tiller if the stands are planted a little wide. Yer buddy can make his own mind up, but personally being able to save heirloom seeds is worth a little work to me. (That and the scientific literature on glyphosphate and endocrine disruption will scare the crap out of most people.)
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by newbietoo »

Not trying to jack your post.
I will take it this guy has the equipment to process the corn. Does everyone that replied have such commercial equipment, or is there something more economical for the small gardener? I have access to plant a very little place and plan to eventually work on getting more land but I need a way to process the corn. Like husk and shell?
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Paulinka »

Easy, silage the leftover from the corn plant at 30-35% dry matter optimal. Dig a big hole, cover its ground with heavy duty plastic, fill it up with the husks, shells, leaves and stems which are all cut up to ~20-30mm length, pack it VERY tightly, cover with plastic and put ground on it. Compress properly with your tractors wheels. Without oxygen, the vegetable matter will ferment with lactobacyllus, creating healthy "pickles" for - and especially - milking cows which is most useful to keep them healthy through the winter months when no fresh greens are available to them. Takes 5-6 weeks to ferment out properly.

If you dont have cows, goats, sheeps, no problem, you can barter it by a barrel for cheese. Milking cows eat 30-45 kg of silage, sows 4-5 kg, even poultry is happy to eat up to 30 dkg daily.

Or if you feel adventorous, press the liquid out of your silage and use it as an acidifier for your sour mash. Beware, it smells like freshly baked cornbread tuned up a hundred-million times, it stinks so concentrated, but there is no better souring agent and it can be the best base for your backset.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by choppinlow »

newbietoo wrote:Not trying to jack your post.
I will take it this guy has the equipment to process the corn. Does everyone that replied have such commercial equipment, or is there something more economical for the small gardener? I have access to plant a very little place and plan to eventually work on getting more land but I need a way to process the corn. Like husk and shell?
I have absolutely no idea what silage corn would be good for in this hobby, nor could I think of a good reason you should silage good sweet corn............ so follow Paulinka's advice at your own discretion.

Sweet corn is typically hand harvested (around my part of the woods anyway). Field corn is typically mechanically "shelled" during mechanical harvest (i.e. tractors/combines). There is some sweet corn that is harvested mechanically but still it is left in the husk and rushed to market or processing.

For small scale sweet corn (harvested fresh with high sugar content) processing and probably a good method for this hobby, go and google Thomas Corn System. There are some other similar styles out there, but you can cream a bunch of corn quickly with their little unit. Sweet corn sugars begin to degrade the minute you pick it and with increased temperature, so the faster to a cooler/freezer and/or faster to processing/use the more sugars you will have. I cream, bag in gallon bags, and freeze often for future use.

For small scale field corn (harvested dry with high starch content) go and google cast iron corn sheller. They can be had pretty cheap and for this hobby can process field corn relatively quickly.....and like how they used to shell corn actually :-) Just to be clear, the term "shelling" here refers to getting the husk off and getting the dried kernels off of the cob. You will still need to harvest and in small scale picking by hand is not very tedious. This is dry corn and you should store like any other grain in a dry place and sealed to keep out weevils (if you can). It typically needs to be cracked or ground for anything here, so you need a mill. Again, there are many small scale grain mills for brewing and similar hobbies you can find online.

You don't need any commercial equipment unless you are planning on very large quantities beyond what you might need for anything here.

Good luck!
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Thanks for all the input. This will give me a lot to discuss with my friend the would-be farmer.
My understanding is that he has quite a bit of seed corn, not sure if we will be trying to save some from this planting or not.
The field is miles away from any other fields, so cross pollenating with other crops might not be too big a problem.
He has someone lined up for the planting, not sure about the harvesting. I don't know if it would be crazy to think we could do this manually, sort of an ear pickin/shuckin party.
I do have an old timey corn sheller that makes quick work out of wrenching the dried kernels off the cobs.

Edit: posted with choppinlow. Thanks for that input, I was hoping that this could be handled without much machinery. I need to do some math to see just how much he is planting and how many ears we're talking about. I regularly buy my corn in 50# sacks, still on cob, so I am used to shelling and grinding.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by Paulinka »

choppinlow wrote:nor could I think of a good reason you should silage good sweet corn............
Dear Choppinlow, of course I'm not talking about the "ears" and "seeds" of the corn, but the leftovers. :wink: If it's not very disgusting, I will say why not, corn-silage is loaded up with lactic acid and fermented corn stalks maybe give some corn-taste to the whisky. Just theory crafting now, got to wait till next winter to try it out.
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by choppinlow »

Paulinka - I don't think he was asking about how to process stalks, etc., but perhaps I misread. If they were asking about processing the corn itself then silage is not the answer.

That said, not all fermentation is the proper fermentation for this hobby. If you are into fermenting for organic acids and things like that and like to drink them, I guess by all means do it. You can produce all sorts of nice acids in anaerobic conditions like butyric, propionic, and acetic (vinegar) acid that way which are some of the acids that produce those nice BO and Jockstrap odors people like so much. None of that is really useful for drinkable alcohol production that I am aware of. But my guess is most folks reading here prefer to ferment sugars from grain (either raw sugar or converted from starch) using yeast for production of ethanol products. Silage is not that.

But I would be very curious to hear what happens to you if you do decide to drink some silage materials. Perhaps it would improve your milk production :-)
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by jedneck »

MichiganCornhusker wrote: He has someone lined up for the planting, not sure about the harvesting. I don't know if it would be crazy to think we could do this manually, sort of an ear pickin/shuckin party.
I do have an old timey corn sheller that makes quick work out of wrenching the dried kernels off the cobs.
Sounds like a good reason for a hd get together
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by newbietoo »

choppinlow wrote:
newbietoo wrote:Not trying to jack your post.
I will take it this guy has the equipment to process the corn. Does everyone that replied have such commercial equipment, or is there something more economical for the small gardener? I have access to plant a very little place and plan to eventually work on getting more land but I need a way to process the corn. Like husk and shell?
I have absolutely no idea what silage corn would be good for in this hobby, nor could I think of a good reason you should silage good sweet corn............ so follow Paulinka's advice at your own discretion.

Sweet corn is typically hand harvested (around my part of the woods anyway). Field corn is typically mechanically "shelled" during mechanical harvest (i.e. tractors/combines). There is some sweet corn that is harvested mechanically but still it is left in the husk and rushed to market or processing.

For small scale sweet corn (harvested fresh with high sugar content) processing and probably a good method for this hobby, go and google Thomas Corn System. There are some other similar styles out there, but you can cream a bunch of corn quickly with their little unit. Sweet corn sugars begin to degrade the minute you pick it and with increased temperature, so the faster to a cooler/freezer and/or faster to processing/use the more sugars you will have. I cream, bag in gallon bags, and freeze often for future use.

For small scale field corn (harvested dry with high starch content) go and google cast iron corn sheller. They can be had pretty cheap and for this hobby can process field corn relatively quickly.....and like how they used to shell corn actually :-) Just to be clear, the term "shelling" here refers to getting the husk off and getting the dried kernels off of the cob. You will still need to harvest and in small scale picking by hand is not very tedious. This is dry corn and you should store like any other grain in a dry place and sealed to keep out weevils (if you can). It typically needs to be cracked or ground for anything here, so you need a mill. Again, there are many small scale grain mills for brewing and similar hobbies you can find online.

You don't need any commercial equipment unless you are planning on very large quantities beyond what you might need for anything here.

Good luck!
I am not trying silage the corn. Nor am I trying to get 100k acres of it either. I can buy a 50lb bag of shelled corn for 10 dollars, but I was just wanting to eventually try a different kind of corn that I cannot buy, just to compare.
My boss man has a few rows of sweet corn planted every year that I am able to get as much as I want and I bag that for my consumption.
I do appreciate your input and I am looking into a cast iron sheller. Thank you very much
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

jedneck wrote:Sounds like a good reason for a hd get together
It sure does, I will keep this post updated as the year goes on...
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Re: Which corn would you grow?

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

newbietoo wrote: I am looking into a cast iron sheller.
That's exactly what I got and it works great. I can shell a 50# bag of corn in about 10 minutes now.
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