Alcohol production is legal in the United States for the householder for up to I think it’s two hundred gallons a year; however, distillation is not legal for private entities. (I believe freeze distillation may be legal in Canada, but not other forms of distillation.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if the moonshine stills were producing something that is either unavailable on the market from commercial producers or significantly better quality than the commercial stuff; I know from my own brewing experience that even a rank amateur can produce a wine as good as many on the market, so I wouldn’t be surprised that a moonshiner with ten, twenty, thirty years experience has something they consider worth the risk of maintaining.
I believe the reason for the ban on distillation is that distilling can create or concentrate alcohols that are highly toxic, incidentally. I don’t remember which of my reference books that information was in, or I’d pull it out.
I live in a weird little time warped burg in northeastern Kentucky…Boyd county in which I reside is wet(liquor sales are legal)Boyd county is surrounded by dry counties(liquor sales or possesion in any form is illegal). Yet the arrests for DWI in the dry counties is like 3 times the number in Boyd. I am not slinging bullshit here, this is really wierd but true. Carter county(which is dry) can’t even raise the funds to open a library, and have to rely on neighboring Greenup County’s jail to handle the overflow of drinking offenses…If I’m correct, Carter has to pay Greenup something like $45 per day for this jailing of their prisoners, so enriched Greenup county remodels their county courthouse with additional jail cells added to reap additional profits.
Moonshiners, and bootleggers around here are generational concerns and have by way of years and years of illegal profits bought into the local political machinery, that continues to keep these counties dry… And this is an assumption, but an assumption shared by everyone in this region, that it never fails that the wet votes(and consequently, the tax revenues realised)never even make it on to the ballot.
Little brown jug…Little brown jug…How I love that little brown jug!