Moonshine is like pickling -- odds are you know somebody who engages in the practice -- and whatever you've sampled out of a mason jar has either been fantastic or mouth-numbingly bad. The main difference is that moonshine is illegal, while pickles are kosher with the law.
Salon decided to look into whether our current do-it-yourself culture will expand into distilling spirits, despite that fact that it's currently illegal to brew your own liquor without a licensed and registered still. The moonshine of today is apparently a far cry from the days of Prohibition -- for example, it sounds like you might enjoy whiskey made from doughnuts.
The doughnut whiskey was part of a class sponsored by the American Distilling Institute,
which hosts workshops at its headquarters in Hayward,
California. And based on one of the students' accounts, there is apparently a rich tradition of moonshine-making
in Kansas:
"When it comes to small-time home distillers,Thethough, enforcement of this rule is more lax than it used to be. Gone
are the days when, as one 86-year-old Kansas farm boy told me,
government planes used to search out backwoods stills from the air."
article suggests that there's a strong underground of
"craft distillers" who can't seek the same legitimacy offered home-beer brewers because spirits laws are unlikely to change. And since
moonshine is illegal, news stories covering stills are most likely to
be found in the police blotter. Last month, two Kansas City men were allegedly assaulted after an apparent moonshine sale went bad at an Arkansas campground.
Moonshine should maybe always be on the
other side of the law -- the danger adds to the taste (and in many
cases you'll take whatever taste improvements you can get). Whiskey running gave us the great early drivers of NASCAR, and moonshine is made by ornery codgers. Pickling, on the other hand, should be better regulated.
[Image via Flickr: Abi Shipp]
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My step-mother's family in Arkansas distills their own alcohol. They make wine, and then they distill some of it into what they call 'grapejack.' I've had some, it is pretty good. I wouldn't want to drink very much of it though... I imagine the hangovers it elicits are no fun.
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