What is Moonshine?
Moonshine
is any kind of alcohol,
usually whisky or rum, that is made in secret to avoid high
taxes or outright bans on alcoholic drinks. The term
"moonshine" comes from Britain, where it originally was a
verb, "moonshining," that referred to any job or activity that
was done late at night. Because the operators of illegal
whisky stills had to conduct their business out of the sight
of legal authorities, these backwoods brewmasters became known
as moonshiners, and the term became exclusively theirs.
Moonshiners are the people who actually make the alcohol.
Bootleggers are the smugglers who transport it and sell
it. In colonial times, these distributors would conceal their
product inside their tall riding boots, which is how they got
their name. More recently, bootleggers in the 1930s, '40s and
'50s took to racing cars packed with moonshine through the
night to avoid local police. Their mechanical skills developed
as they learned to drastically increase the horsepower
of their vehicles to outrun the authorities. This created a
culture of car lovers in the southern United States that
eventually grew into the popular NASCAR
racing series. In fact, the winner of the first ever
NASCAR
race had used the same car to make a bootleg run just a week
earlier.
Related to moonshiners and bootleggers are
rumrunners. Rumrunners are basically bootleggers who
smuggle their goods by sea, using fast ships with hidden cargo
holds.
It's All in the
MashMoonshine made from
grain, like corn or rye, is whisky. But
alcohol can be made from many different ingredients.
During Prohibition, profit-hungry moonshiners started
using white sugar instead of corn meal, producing
a cheaper product that was technically rum, not
whisky. Fruits could also be used instead of
grains -- today, moonshiners in Appalachian states still
manufacture apple
brandy.
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The
recipe for moonshine is simple:
- corn meal
- sugar
- yeast
- water
Sometimes, other ingredients are included
to add flavor or kick. Alcohol can actually be distilled from
almost any kind of grain (the earliest American moonshiners
used rye or barley), but virtually all moonshine made in the
United States for the last 150 years has been made with
corn.
So what makes moonshine different from the whisky you find
on the shelf at a liquor store? Aside from the obvious
differences between something made in a sanitized production
facility and something made at night in the woods, the primary
difference is aging. When whisky comes out of the
still, it's so clear it looks like water. Moonshiners bottle
it and sell it just like that. Commercial alcohols have an
amber or golden color to them -- this is because they are aged
for years in charred oak barrels. The aging process gives them
color and mellows the harsh taste. There's no such mellowing
with moonshine, which is why it has such "kick."
In the next section, we'll learn how corn, water and yeast
become moonshine.
Here are some interesting links:
