…that is to say, other than containing alcohol, is it anything like what’s coming out of a still in the hills of West Virginia?
You won’t go blind or otherwise be poisoned.
Some of those stills are licensed to sell small amounts commercially so maybe you are seeing authentic West Virginia moonshine.
No.
What you get at the liquor store is raw corn spirits. Produced by a licensed, legal distillery with modern, efficient equipment. Inspected. Taxed. Distributed by major companies. Sold for inflated prices to people who should know better, by corporations that are greedy.
What you get from moonshiners is raw spirits, produced mainly from sugar in iffy stills by unsavory people, bottled in plastic milk jugs and sold to people who should know better.
I’m with silenus.
As an aside, I don’t quite understand why there’s a market for fake “moonshine”. That market niche has been ably filled by Everclear for as long as I can remember.
Maybe I am missing out on an opportunity here. Buy Everclear, pour into Mason jars, dilute to 120 proof , sell at 5x price of Everclear.
Well, certainly there’s the whole death and blindness part. I’ll consider that an experience best not experienced. Flavor-wise? Could I have a shot and say that “I’ve had moonshine” or is it the Epcot-center version of moonshine?
I guess I’m curious as to taste but if I got some, I wonder if it is it at all “real”.
Agree. Max Watman’s excellent book Chasing the White Dog is, in part, an exploration of the current practice of moonshining. There is not a market for finely crafted moonshine made in the corn whiskey style. The demand is for exceptionally cheap sugar spirit, sold in bulk, often to inner city markets up and down the coast.
The unaged corn liquor that’s (inexplicably, in my opinion) populasr now may hearken back to a long gone tradition of distilling from grain, but imagining it to have any relation to what’s done now is the same path that has you shopping for artisanal meth.
Plus, given that the general understanding of the term moonshine, going way back to contrabrand brandy in England, is that it’s an illegal spirit, distilled and transported under cover of dark. So “legal moonshine” unpacks to “legal illegal liquor”. At least how I see it.
[QUOTE=Chuck Cowdery]
Since moonshine is any distilled spirit produced illegally, and not a distilled spirit type, there can be no such thing as ‘legal moonshine.’
[/QUOTE]
To clear up a common misconception, the stuff coming out of a moonshiner’s still doesn’t make anyone blind no matter how crappy they are at distilling. Fermentation of grain or sugar does produce methanol (the alcohol that commonly causes blindness), but in very minute amounts that are insufficient to cause blindness. Most of it is removed during distillation even by the worst distillers.
Moonshine is associated with blindness because of people intentionally adding methanol after distillation to boost up the alcohol level. It’s cheap and initially gives a buzz like ethanol (that whole blindness-and-death thing comes later).
It really is just amazing what marketing can do. In the last five or six years, the whiskey shelves of the liquor stores I frequent have expanded to include fruit-flavored whiskies, cinnamon-flavored whiskies, and now whiskies that haven’t even been aged in barrels. They’re products that offer the consumer none of the subtle flavor and aromas of bourbon, and allow their producers to mask awful grain alcohol with false flavors and, in the case of “moonshine,” save the cost of aging the product in oak barrels for years without reflecting that lower price in the MSRP.
Bah.
My grandfather used to make moonshine (along with wine, brandy, and other kinds of booze), and trust me, he wasn’t what you’d call “unsavory”. Cranky, but not unsavory.
:dubious:
I had some moonshine at my cousin’s on Christmas Day, and I swear to god, if you didn’t know what you were drinking, you’d think it was some kind of soft drink. There was no alcohol taste.
I’ll also bet your grandpa didn’t make sugar 'shine.
Methanol or no, consume enough of the stuff and one will go blind from the lead.
I’ve had moonshine from an old wine bottle, distilled illegally, and flavored with peaches. It was freaking delicious, and like Guin said, smooth as Koolaid, though I was assured it was 80 proof.
I’ve also had legal corn liquor, sold in mason jars, that tasted like turpentine run off a baboon’s ass. I got it as a gift, and haven’t drank it since that first taste – and a few whiffs since to remind me why not. Does anybody drink this stuff? Or is it basically a gag gift that sits in your liquor cabinet until you need to clean tar off of something?
There is a variety at the store with a bunch of cherries in the jar that is pretty good though, if you like getting drunk on cherries.
You’re right, I left off some important caveats. Moonshiners who use old radiators in their stills can introduce some pretty toxic stuff - not methanol, but the source of your blindness isn’t too important at that point. I would guess that the number of people who have gone blind due to lead poisoning from a radiator-still is way smaller than the people who died/went blind from methanol poisoning, but I can’t cite that.
And animal carcasses are disgusting to think about and certainly don’t help the flavor, but they generally don’t leave anything toxic or dangerous in the moonshine after mashing and distillation.
Yeah, we had peach, banana, and apple. Absolutely divine. (My cousin’s father-in-law got it from a friend who makes it)
I could go for that again right now, actually.
There was a series on cable about modern moonshiners and the revenue agents trying to chase them down. And there are some (very few) who do go legit. Besides just paying taxes, they have to do a lot of paperwork, pass inspections, etc. On the other hand, They can do their work in a safer, more stable environment. Seemed to me that most of the moonshiners weren’t of the temperament to work their way through the paperwork.
So, yeah, I think there is real moonshine on some liquor store shelves. And I had a swig of moonshine once. It smelled terrible and was strong as anything. Never wanted to try any again.
This is my experience with 100 proof “moonshine” in mason jars. Just awful. If you want high octane that is smooth, get Bacardi 151, which is 75% ethanol. It will f you up with one-half the usual volume of liquid.
I bought a bottle as a gag gift for my cousin back home here in Ireland. The reason I thought it’d be funny is because he is my main connect for póitín.
I had some moonshine in college that was distilled in a dorm-room closet. I’m not sure if it was sugar or corn based. That was a pretty poor decision.