How Moonshine Works

Link Mink Coke. I could totally thank you. Um yeah, because who wants red pain or blood thrown all over when they walk down straight? Um? Chucker, have an anecdote for you? I don't, I don't want to know. All right, well I need to come up with another segway then go ahead. Okay, So, back before we knew each other, uh, years and years ago, my I had a whole group of friends, good friends. My dad was there, both my

brothers in law were there. Um and one of my great all time friends, Tom Shechef, who actually writes for the site. Yeah yes, yeah, oh yeah, good friends. Uh. He came down from Tennessee. He was living in Johnson City, Tennessee at the time. And Tom brought with him to the party a pint of moonshine, just perfectly crystal clear moonshine. And there was no no no, believe me, whoever made

this knew exactly what they were doing. Um, there was a peach in the bottom even and um, one of my friends, who was probably the youngest one at the party, kind of a little punk at the time, Um, just jokingly, you know, grabbed the moonshine and walked over to my dad, who was in his sixties at the time, uh, and said, hey, maw, you want to do some shots? And my dad grabbed the pint and it just went from there. Those two drank the whole thing and my dad matched the twenty

one year old kids shot for shot of moonshine. And it gets better. And then after they were finished, my dad ate the peach. My dad ate the peach and imagine that thing, uh really had soaked up quite a bit of a booze. It really. My dad has no recollection of this event, um, but it's kind of become around my family. Uh. This uh, this kind of badge of honor. He hit the peach, you know, that kind

of thing. So anytime somebody does something like really cool or tough or unexpecting, you know that he ate the peach. So that was my segue into how moonshine were. That's good like that? Yeah, yeah, have you have you ever tasted moonshine? Yeah? Yeah, I'm drinking before. I actually lived in Johnson City for a little while. I knew some people, and I gotta tell you, man, it is Appalachia like around.

I actually lived outside kind of up on a mountain um around the corner from people who lived in school buses with chimneys coming. I'm not kidding on Roan Mountain and there are tons of still still around. Like you can get moonshine from anybody up there. And the people they all know what they're doing. They're not doing it for you know, profit or anything like that. These are people who, you know, guys who are like into homebrewing.

But imagine if like you're in a homebrewing and your grandfather taught you how to do it, you know that kind of thing, Like they know exactly what they're going to, take a bunch of pride in it, and then you know, you just kind of get it from a friend or something, and it's actually really cheap. It's like tim Bucks for a cord or something like that. I've never paid for. I've had it quite a few times too, at various parties. You know, someone like you said, we'll just show up

out of nowhere with a jar and mason jar. And I always kind of befriend that person because I'd love to taste of moonshine. It's really uh tough to to stomach, but there's something about the corn whiskey. Yeah, But I think right now is when the point where that we should say that it's illegal and in any form. Yeah, we do not encourage anyone to go out and build our own still, even though we're going to tell you

how to. And this is also based on an article you can find out how stuff works dot com in the A P section. That doesn't tell you something, right, I don't know what that says about us, but yeah, well, we have recipes for moonshine on our site. That's what it says, all right, So Chuck, let's let's let's talk about moonshine a little bit. Where should we Where should we start? Well, I think we should travel back in time a bit to great Britain to the UK. Oh yeah,

English words come from great thinking. Right. The word moonshine actually comes from England. Originally, the term started from a verb moonshining, which was referred to any job that you did late at night, like the midnight shift was moonshining, and it eventually just kind of morphed into uh making illegal booze because they did it at night, you know,

under cover of the night. Well not only did they make it, they also ran it, which is a different word bootlegging, right, It was it was smuggled at night, right, and that if you want to know the do from the word there is from they would stick it in their high boots, the bottles and the writing boots, right, yeah they're writing. But yeah, that's how they smuggle it. So bootleggers, I really choked that out there. This is

this is this is during colonial time. Yeah, okay, so uh these are distinct words, like a moonshiner and a bootlegger maybe one and the same, but it depends on the activity they're engaged in at any given time. Right, So the moonshiner actually makes the stuff, the bootlegger smuggles it. And there's a third one actually to a rum runner, which is by sea. It's a bootlegger who who smuggles

by sea? Yeah, it's all very like it's yes, this wonderful, hazy past of smuggling ships and riding horses with phil you know, with boots filled with whiskey. Yeah, let's try not to romanticize it. Yeah, you're right. Um, I think though, I'm gonna set you up here because I know this

is your favorite part of this whole podcast. Uh. In the nineteen forties and fifties, Uh, in the United States who started doing this by car, started filling up their trunk full of moonshine and bootlegging high speed chases and go and actually this this these people were tinker with

their cars. Um. They You've got these kind of backwoods mechanics who learned to take like a Ford V eight and turned it into this supercharged, turbo boosted, wonderfully suspended car that could outrun any cop in the Georgia Mountains. Think of the Dukes of Hazzard that kind of time, and that these guys actually kind of became gearheads and they started challenging one another to races, and out of

that came NASCAR. NASCAR is directly descended from bootlegging. Yep so, and actually the first guy I love this, I love this fact. The first guy to win an official NASCAR race. His name was Glenn Dunaway and he won the first official race on December twelve in Daytona, Florida. UM. He won the race, but was disqualified because the it's a stock car racing, you're not supposed to have a modified UM and he had an illegal wedge uh too for for handling right, So he was disqualified, But he actually

won the first race. Of the reason he had the wedge was because he used that car to smuggle a bunch of whiskey the week earlier in North Carolina, the same car. I know that you're fat. You should just end it right now. It doesn't get me better than that. You're gonna go to sleep. Can you take the rest? I'll take it from you. Uh so, Yeah, you talked about UM run running, which is by sea and uh bootlegging,

I'm sorry. Moonshine is made of corn. Generally in the US, it's almost exclusively made of corn, but it can be made of any grain right, correct, But for fruit true, anything that has starches in it, right, But it's generally in the US made you can hear it referred to as corn whiskey. So you need corn meal, sugar, yeast, and water. Every alcoholic beverage I think needs yeast? Is that true? I don't, I don't I know beer? Does you really put me on the spot here? I know

someone's going, I've got something for you. Part of the process of making whiskey involves the same process as you used to make beer. Right. Um, it's that's fermentation exactly, and tech thinically apparently among the distilleries, the word that they use for the fermented alcohol before it's distilled is beer. So apparently any alcohol it goes through a fermentation process is technically called beer. So wine would technically be beer, right.

Isn't that weird? Okay? But that's just step one in the and the fermentation process basically just adding um, yeast to whatever grain there is, and the yeast goes to town on it. They're very simple plants actually, Um. They ingest this stuff and as a byproduct they put out carbon dioxide and alcohol, and what that stuff is called is mash. So this fermented stuff is called mash. And um,

you take the mash. And now we get into the distilling process, right, Well, then you heat it up, yes, to about a hundred and seventy two degrees fahrenheiten and uh would coal? You can use anything basically you want that you can easy steam to heat a up. Sure, Now they use propane and I understand sure because you

know you figure uh. And what happens is from there, the alcohol evaporates, pressure builds up, and the alcohol steam is forced through an arm which is a caparm, which is the pipe that leads out of the top of the still. So you have this evaporation going on, and then it goes into a what they call a thump keg, right, And it's so named because it catches sometimes some of this mash comes along with the alcohol vapor and when it comes into this hollow cag and hits the bottom

and makes a thumping sound exactly. So this thump keg is is intended to further separate the mash from the alcohol vapor. Right. Can you imagine, like inhaling alcohol vapor? What would that do to you? I don't know, It's probably not very good. Okay, So so we're in the thump cake. Now, can you hear us, right, we are sour mash mash nice nice, So okay, chuck, what's going

on in here? Well? And the thump keg, like you said, the bits of mash drop into inside of here where we are, and then it re evaporates the alcohol and filters out the mash because you don't want the mash. Which you want is a clear liquid, all right, So up we go out of the thumb cake and where are we? Up? And out of the thumb keg and

now we travel into the worm um as steam. Yes, no, this is the the most fun part of the ride because the worm is actually basically just a pipe that coils around, right, So if we were actually able to go through, it would probably be kind of like a fun water slide. Yeah. And this worm actually, this this coil pipe actually just going through cold water which cools the alcohol from its gaseous state back into its liquid state.

And guess where that arm comes out. Well, it comes out eventually into a little jar yep or whatever you want to put it, a pigot, and then bottle is right from there, right, And that said mason jar because many times it's it's I don't know if it's tradition or not. But they put it in mason. I've never seen in anything but a mason. Yeah, maybe a ball jar. That's about it, right. And what happens is now you've

got a clear liquid. And that brings us to the the difference between moonshine and regular whiskey that you would get that's brown or you know, light colored, is the aging process. Moonshine is not aged, and that's why it remains clear. You're Jack Daniels that you love, Uh, that is the same thing for a little while, but then it's aged for years in oak barrels, charred oak barrels. Yeah, and I looked into the charring part. The reason they

char the inside of the oak barrels. They're actually caramelizing the starches, which makes it sweeter. So the the the the bourbon. This is the part of the bourbon making process. The bourbon actually absorbs the sugars more, which make gives it a sweeter taste and mellows it even further because it also gives it its brown color. Because moonshine is known for the they called the kick, and both of us can attest it is a very harsh tasting whiskey. Yeah,

it really is. It definitely has a kick, and it tastes like nothing else that you've had. No, it's it tastes like God pulling your throat out. You kind of see a white light and there's just like a sudden, blinding flash of pain and that's the kick. That's that's a great it's a great way to describe it. I wouldn't have thought of that. It's good. Um. It's also very potent. Um. I think moonshine usually is uh in

the neighborhood of a hundred fifty proof, which is a lot. Yeah, that's a lot, because what is it eighty proof for ninety proof? Is on fifty proof would be alcohol? Right, but your average like bottle of bourbon is is ninety proof correct? Yeah? Eight nine? Yeah, yeah, because I mean wild turkeys they have a special one d Yeah true, yeah, probably eight Josh. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you imbibe with an alcoholic beverage from time. Okay,

that's a good um. So, uh, they make the moonshine. And one of the problems with moonshine, I guess we need to talk about the downside is that it can be dangerous if someone doesn't know what they're doing. Yeah, here's the big problem. This is why all of you shouldn't run out and make your own still, as Chuck said earlier, because because it's illegal. That's that's number one, it is illegal. One of the reasons it's illegal is

because it's so thoroughly unsafe. So I mean like when you make beer wine at home, which you can legally because you're making it in small batches. But number two, it's not nearly as dangerous. Whenever you make any kind of alcohol, you have a risk of um of their being impurities in your batch, right, um, and these impurities can be dangerous and beer wine, but it's much less

likely when compared to spirits like whiskey. Um. And these these impurities are called congeners, right, And what those are, it's it's just to catch all name for any impurity that's a complex compound, like a polyphenol um or histamine, you know, those things that give you allergic reactions. These can easily end up in your batch. And this is why people often die from drinking moonshine. It's not just

from alcohol poison or anything like that. It's it's these impurities get in there and re havoc on your body. And yeah, I would say not as much anymore. I mean, not that it's a huge business or anything. But during Prohibition, I know there were a lot of people that were dying because they were it was in such demand because it was alcohol was illegal that they were mixing it too fast, and the operations sped up and and they actually sometimes purposely put impurities in there give it that

kick like bleach was. It was often found in in moonshine during Prohibition, right. It's always it's funny we mentioned it's called Mash. It always reminds me of the TV show Mash, one of my favorite shows growing up, because you know, they had they're still in the what was the name of their the swamp in their tent and then distillery didn't they well they called it gin. But it's looking back now, this is before I ever had moonshine when I watched Mash, but it was probably just

corn whiskey. I doubt if they were able to make like nice gin. I always took it as gin. No, I bet it. I bet it was moonshine. I don't know, man, they were sipping like it was gin all right, Alan Alda needs to get in touch with us or the guy who played b J or Trapper or any of them. Really just no radar, no radar. I was about to say this, so Chuck. You know, moonshine um has actually a really long history with the U S. And it's so much so, it's so ingrained that it has it's

had this kind of symbiotic effect on our cultural legacy. Um. When you start looking into moonshine, like NASCAR being you know, coming out of moonshine, or the term bootlegger that's used world brown came from the United States and are are smuggling right, Um. But when you really start to look into the history of moonshine and how it helps shape America, we used to be a nation of crazy, gun slinging nut jobs. I mean we used to be wild, especially

like in the nineteenth century. Um, bootleggers used to the whole the whole reason boot egging was ever around in the US was because basically right after we formed our nation, our second government that the one we have now the constitutional government. Um, they started imposing taxes on on liquor, and everybody had just said, well wait, a minute. We just got out from under the thumb of a king who used to taxes. We're not paying any taxes and

they didn't. They know they didn't. And actually, um, they would attack revenuers, tax collectors. They would tar and feather them, which sounds kind of funny now because we're sort of moved from it. That was actually apparently an extremely excruciating process. You like hot tar port on you and then you know, the feathers were probably nothing but a relief, but you're walking around and imagine trying to get cool tar off of your skin. Yeah, so I imagine being tart and

feather wasn't that much fun. But even beyond that, they actually formed an armed uprising called the Whiskey Rebellion. Yeah, and that was the Washington's first big wow as president. Holy crap, I'm president. And they just took over Pittsburgh and it was like people from a lot of states. There were thousands of them. They were armed, and they were mad. They did not want to pay money or

taxes on the liquor they were producing. Um. And it was actually the first use of a presidential pardon to overturn conviction was from the Whiskey rebellion did not know that it is, So what g W did, uh, which is George Washington. Of course he got together um a militia of about thirteen thousand dudes, and he basically quelled and dispersed the mob, captured as leaders and it was, like you said, forever known as a Whiskey rebellion. But

there was nothing, nothing was actually resolved. Well, that's that's the the government and bootleggers. They go side by side, and every once in a while, usually when war funding is needed, the government attacks bootlegging to try to increase its its tax revenues. Um. So the basically the federal government went its way, the bootleggers went their way, and they maintained the status quo. Basically we kept having bootlegging. No one really had a problem with it until the

clan got involved. And any American knows that in the United States you can do whatever you want as long as you're not hurting anybody and you're not affiliated with the clan. Everybody hates the clan here. Think it's something that yeah, the ku Klux Klan. I think that's something that people, you know, maybe some of our Norwegian or or Dutch listeners might not understand Americans hate the clan. We do. And this actually UM kind of led to uh,

this outlaw view of bootleggers that we have now. So they were getting into shootouts and killing I R s auditors and collectors and um, intimidating families and you know, locals even who knew like where it still was. Well, bootleggers joined forces and made the mistake, the big mistake of joining up with the clan, right, that's what I mean. So that turned the tied to public opinion all of a sudden. Bootleggers aren't just you know, so harmless anymore.

They're in with the clan. So um that actually gave the temperance movement even more of a foothold. The Temperance movement is my worst nightmare. It is UM. Basically no, there's no alcohol produced or imported into the United States. Imagine the entire country dry. This is the point of the Temperance movement. And they weren't just you know, crackpots. They were actually they had identified alcohol as an agent

of moral decay, social decay. It was a problem. So rather than and this is before rehab to rather than UM having alcoholics go dry out or take care of their their problem, their addiction. They said, we have a social responsibility to not tempt our alcoholics. We have to put them above the rest of us because the rest of us are an alcoholics, so we don't need a drink. So let's just get rid of alcohol together, or alcoholics

can be good people. Yeah, Well, it actually happened. They finally got prohibition pushed through in the day the earth stood still. Uh, and it lasted, um from nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty four, and it actually turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to bootlegging because all of a sudden, people there's one thing that they learned from prohibition is you can try and take away the alcohol, but the people want it and they're gonna get it. And I would liken it to the War

on drugs. Yeah, it's just it's the exact same thing. Anytime you prohibit anything, Number one, it makes it, um, It gives it kind of a forbidden feel, which makes it all the more desirable. Um. But I mean, think about how many people wouldn't or don't drink now be just because it's there. How many more would if you simply couldn't. And yeah, if prohibition proved anything, it's that if when there's a will, organized crime finds a way.

So we've got speakeasies, we've got gang land murders, we've got moonshine that's being put out, it's being overproduced and watered down and with bleach added, and then all of a sudden, prohibition goes away, and almost almost at the same time, so does moonshining, almost entirely well drastically reduced. And but it came made a big well I know about a big comeback, but it made a comeback as we talked about later on with the whole NASCAR thing.

And then in um the nineteen seventies, uh, sixties and seventies, they thought it was sort of a problem again, but they didn't really do a lot about it. Like there's very few court cases about it unless it has to do with I think they'll tie like money laundering using money laundering laws which are way way worse than than you know, moonshining being convicted of moonshining, UM and with that, moonshining is becoming a dying art, right, but they still

do it. And then in the nineteen seventies, they made it legal to make your own and and beer with homebrew enthusiasts. I mean you can, but it's illegal. Yeah, let's say it one more time, Chuck, it's illegal. I'm kind of surprised, actually if they allow homebrewing. It's it's sort of a maybe because it's more dangerous as the reason that's that's the impression I have is it's strictly because it's more dangerous, because I don't think they levy taxes any any higher on beer wine than they do

on liquor. Do they don't know? I'm sure we'll have someone right in and tell I'm quite sure too. Well. You can find out even more about how moonshine works by typing that in to our handy search bar how stuff works dot Com. It'll bring up a fine, fine article written by our colleague, Ed Grebanowski. Yes, indeed, and Chuck, I believe you had some listener mail listener mail time, Okay, Josh, I do have an email, and I will file this under exceptional fan mail because it is one of my favorites.

Is from our old friend Molly in Manchester, Connecticut. Hey Molly, Hey Molly, and Molly may not be hearing this right away though, and this is the reason why Molly writes in says she loves the podcast, and uh she is actually going to West Africa to serve in the Peace Corps for two years, which is a great thing to do. We're very proud of Molly for that. And she's told that there is a much hope of having a continual

lists continuous wireless internet and her mud hut. So uh, she says, she gets a thrill from listening to our cast, and so she's actually gonna save them up and for a period of many months, and so when she gets to Africa in the Peace Corps she can listen to them one after the other on her little iPod and uh we she says, she. I know it seems a little extreme. I don't think so, Molly. I think it's

a great idea. And I think that the hours and hours of new stuff I should know to listen to when I'm feeling in the need of intelligent, humorous banter might be worth the sacrifice. So I've actually corresponded with Molly a couple of times by email, and yeah, wished her luck and told her to into some updates from the Peace Corp and let us know how things are going. Yeah,

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