Recipies For Whiskey Stills

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Moonshine

Moonshine comes among a selected fun and tasty recipes for whiskey stills. Get the cooking method of one of the most popular recipes for whiskey stills.

Moonshine is basically corn whiskey. According to Sharon Herbst, "Corn whiskey, still called moonshine and white lightning in some rural areas of the south… is distilled from fermented mash of not less than 80% corn. It's distilled at less than 160 proof (80% alcohol)" (Herbst 1). Folklore has it that moonshine got its name from the light of the moon. In an article in the online publication Cocktail (link provided below) it is stated, "This term was primarily used in the rural South to describe whiskey that was illegally &emdash; read "hardly" &emdash; distilled late at night while its makers were well-concealed, under the light of the moon" (Cocktail).

In "Moonshine Industry" (another online article; link provided below) the author reports that "Scotch-Irish settlers moving into the region brought with them their time honored whiskey recipes" (LBL). In fact, the word Whiskey comes from the ancient Gaelic culture that predated the Scots and Irish. In Gaelic "whiskey" means "water of life." In the popular imagination, though, "moonshine" is often confused with "Firewater," the term which many Native Americans used to describe any type of ardent spirit. However, it seems that the Scots-Irish were not the only ones with a fondness for whiskey. American scholar Charles H. Baker once said, "Taken sanely and in moderation whiskey is beneficial, aids digestion, helps throw off colds, migraines, and influenza. Used improperly the effect is just as bad as stuffing on too many starchy foods, taking no exercise, or disliking our neighbor" (Cocktail).

Despite the fact that the Scots-Irish brought over the recipe, it became famous in America because of the Appalachian Mountain people. Provided with the main ingredient of corn, the farmers only needed one more ingredient, the still itself. Paul Harrington (in an online article; link provided below) writes that it is fairly easy to build a still: "The simplest still is a pressurized system containing a heat source, a tank to hold liquids, a hood or gooseneck tube to collect vapors, and a condenser, or container, where the vapor turns to liquid" (Par 5). Also, many moonshine stills were located in the Mountain South because of the limestone deposits there. In "Moonshine Industry" the author states, "Limestone flavored the area's natural spring water, giving the moonshine a distinctive `between the rivers' flavor; also large stone blocks from abandoned iron ore furnaces made perfect foundations for the larger stills" (LBL).

The production and sale of moonshine in America was illegal long before the prohibition act of the 1920s. Moonshine production was illegal mostly because of the dangerous ingredients often used in it and because of the federal government's insistence that no untaxed profit be made by its distillers. In Cocktail the author states that "the potent brew was usually made with corn and toxic ingredients &emdash; battery acid and rubbing alcohol &emdash; to speed the fermentation" (Cocktail ). However, after the advent of the Prohibition era, moonshine became widespread in an underground world of the rural South, much as it did in the urban Speakeasies of the 20's and 30's.

Today moonshine is still in production and is still very illegal. Areas of North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia (to name only a few) are the breeding grounds for the moonshine stills of the 90's. North Carolina journalist Martha Quillin says "ALE (Alcohol Law Enforcement) can't estimate how much liquor and brandy is made in Broadslab [a small town in North Carolina] each year, but the area is regarded as the key production site in the South's 'moonshine belt.' In 1995 agents seized a total of 800 gallons during raids in Broadslab: so far this year, 1351 gallons" (Quillin 6).

Thus it is apparent today just as it was in the era of Anderson's "The Jury Case" that the money produced from illegal moonshine stills remains sufficient to keep the business going. Federal and state governments are unable to determine the exact amount of money brought in by the stills, but the amount of money lost each year by the government's regulatory agencies is unbelievable. Each year ALE spends up to $560,000 of its $7 million budget chasing moonshiners (Quillin 1). When all is said and done, then, the moonshine business has been in existence for hundreds of years and despite the dangers of it, it seems that the illegal moonshine business will continue as long as there are humans around to drink it.
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