18 September 2014
The Short Answer (TSA)
“Moonshine” is an alcoholic beverage. I thought it was an illegally distilled liquor produced in the hill country of southern America. But I was surprised to find out that almost every country in the world has “Moonshine.” The United States probably has one moonshine-related claim to fame.
The name. The name “Moonshine” was first used in America to describe the American version of a liquor that is illegally-distilled in the dark of the night.
American moonshine is also called white lightning, mountain dew, or white whiskey. Made with corn mash, moonshine has an unusually high alcohol content – with alcohol levels of about 50%. And, of course, moonshine is produced and sold illegally.
Prohibition is remembered for period of a little over a decade in which the manufacture and sale of alcohol was illegal in the United States. But, through history, individual “dry” states and “dry” counties have had blanket restrictions on alcohol sales.
Even locations in which the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was legal, high taxes often made the legal product twice as expensive as the illegal moonshine. With sales restrictions and taxes opening “niches” for an illegal market, moonshine has, and is still, produced in the United States.
While nighttime production led to the name moonshine. The use of the words, “white” and “dew” refer this liquor’s clear color. The term “lightning” refers to the speed of production. Distillation is done very quickly and the finished product is promptly packaged in canning or Mason jars. Special procedures such as the “aging,” done in more cultivated distilling processes, are skipped in the production of moonshine.
Even with relatively high taxes, reduced prices and fewer restrictions on sales have cut into the market for illegal moonshine. Also, the illegal moonshine customer would do well to know his or her producer. Casual and make-shift distilling processes and equipment have given illegal moonshine a less than good reputation for safety -- with impurities occasionally producing toxic effects.
Historically, wooden distilling equipment could result in a product with a significant amount of toxic menthol (wood) alcohol. Hence, the friendly warning by the moonshine-serving host: “It’ll blind ya, Boy.” And, sometimes, it did.
M Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri
(& Belleville, Illinois)
16 September 2014
About the Author
M Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri
(& Belleville, Illinois)
16 September 2014
About the Author
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