eeze are poisonous and potentially deadly. My family had a friend that was in a coma and suffered kidney damage after drinking contaminated moonshine. Thankfully, he lived but it could have easily gone the other direction.
Moonshine is made from fermented corn mash distilled in a cooker. The name moonshine was taken from the term “moonlighter” used by the English to describe the nighttime runners that smuggled brandy from France. After World War I, the agricultural prices dropped so during Prohibition, many American farmers turned to making moonshine as a way to support their families.
Cosby, Tennessee was known as the “Moonshine Capital of the World”. In the 1960’s it was claimed there were over 200 stills operating on any given day, each averaging 20 gallons a day. It was also locally claimed that they ran moonshine to Atlanta, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Asheville, as well as some unnamed northern cities.
The first thing you need before you can make moonshine is a still. A typical mountain still uses a stone furnace for heat and a metal still for fermenting and heating the mash. Large barrels are used to collect the steam and for condensing the alcohol. It is always a smart moonshiner who locates his still next to a mountain stream where good cold water can be easily piped in to condense the steam from the liquor.
- 50 lb of cornmeal
- 200lb of sugar
- 200 gallons of water
- 12 oz of yeast.
A hint: Don’t buy your sugar all in one place because it is a sure sign to the “revenuers” that you are going to make moonshine.
- First carry all your supplies up to your mountain hideout. Have someone else there to keep the still nice and hot.
- Bring the cornmeal to a boil add yeast and all your sugar to ferment the mash.
- When the mash stops bubbling it is cooked in the still and the stream is captured in a barrel filled with cold mountain stream water.
- The steam is allowed to cool and condensed by running it though a long copper coil submerged in another barrel with water in a trough from the near by cold mountain st