More About Devin’s
The only whiskey distilled
from farm-fresh sweet white corn
Devin uses sweet white corn for its subtle richness & elegant flavor
The best distilled spirits are made from great ingredients: cognac from ripe grapes,
pear brandy from real pears, tequila from mature agaves.
Devin Cain had a brilliant idea: a way to make whiskey using farm-fresh corn, the same corn you buy, take home, and enjoy: sweet rich corn flavor. Other whiskies uniformly use corn that is harvested after it dries on the cobs.
Harvesting dried field corn
The problem with using dried corn is that it has lost all the fresh corn sugars that make it sweet, and a lot of its flavor. Almost all dried corn is Yellow Dent #2, which doesn’t have great flavor to start with. Most of the flavor of whiskey made with dried corn comes for the oak barrels it’s aged in.
Adding yeast to boiled dried corn
Dried field corn for whiskey needs to have its sugars and flavors reconstituted by steeping it in hot water, or boiling it. Many distillers add sugar. It’s this “mash” that is fermented for distillation
Devin had worked with fresh corn when he created a superb vodka for a corn grower in Brentwood, California. He thought, why not make whiskey from this corn?
Devin approached Ansley Coale, who co-founded the first serious craft distillery in 1981 (Germain-Robin brandy and, working with St George Spirits, created the first national craft spirits brand, Hangar One vodka.
Ansley loved the concept and said, “Let’s do it.” He got a whiskey distillery license under the name Spirits Daddy, and Devin went to work.
Larger experiments used a Holstein 25-liter lab still. This is other first initial trial distillation.
Devin and Ansley did a lot of tasting.
Sheila Town husking the corn ears
When we were ready, we got a couple of pallets of fresh corn and went to work.
Ready to be shelled.
Ansley bought a sophisticated corn sheller that does the work delicately, so the niblets don’t get bruised.
For fermentation, Devin uses champagne yeasts. He distills with the antique cognac still used for Germain-Robin brandy.
Fresh whiskey coming off the still
The anique hand-made still makes spirits with well-defined flavors and notable finesse.
Great distillers have serious focus.
The first run was even better than we hoped for.
Ansley stirring the whiskey before filtration.
A light polishing filtration doesn’t take away flavor.
Hand-bottling, and we’re done.
That was batch 1, released in early 2023. With batch 2, we made some improvements – smoother and richer – and designed a new label.