What Do They Stick In Thw Moonshine Still?

Moonshiners Use an Unusual Raccoon Bone When Distilling Their Liquor > > > Source: Discovery Moonshiners take advantage of a raccoon pecker when they’re distilling their liquor, but why do they use that obscure bone in their process? By Mar.1 2021, Updated 10:31 a.m. ET By the nature of its creation, is a somewhat unusual beverage.

1. It’s supposed to be homemade, which means that those who produce it often have to get creative to avoid having to purchase unnecessary items.
2. That helps to explain why many involved in the brewing, like the cast of, take advantage of in order to help them pour their moonshine from one vessel into another.

Article continues below advertisement Although by its design, is a do-it-yourself process, that doesn’t mean it’s all that simple. Making alcohol isn’t the easiest task in the world, and it requires a number of different processes, including distillation. Source: Discovery Article continues below advertisement Unlike most mammals, raccoons actually have a bone in their penis that helps keep it stiff during copulation. That bone also happens to be quite useful in helping to guide the moonshine out of the still and into the vessel where it will be drunk.

1. The reason they use raccoon penis bones is actually quite simple: most moonshiners are also raccoon hunters, so they have plenty available.
2. The bones are also sometimes referred to as toothpicks or “Alabama toothpicks” because of their association with the rural lifestyle popular in that part of the country.

In fact, the use of raccoon peckers for moonshining is so common that it even has a page on, It may seem like a strange practice, but it also seems to be a pretty practical one. Article continues below advertisement Moonshining has only become more popular in the wake of shows like, which follow people who make and sell their alcohol illegally.

• While the show does take steps to accurately depict that process of creating moonshine, the idea that what they’re doing is against the law may be a little more open to interpretation.
• Article continues below advertisement According to Tim and Tickle, two of the show’s central characters, they aren’t caught because by the time the episodes make it to television, they are no longer committing any crimes.

As the government doesn’t care about the quality of the beverage. All they’re really interested in is how much their cut is, and whether the product is being taxed or not. “There’s not really a big fear here,” Tim explained about the possibility that they’ll be caught.

• It’s just that the government can’t get their money accounted for.
• That’s all it is.
• They don’t have a taste regulation today.
• I mean right now the legal brand of whiskey on the shelf, there’s no taste regulator on it.
• You can go buy anything and say ‘I don’t like it.
• It doesn’t taste good.’ There’s no regulations on it.” Whether the show is real or not, it’s certainly sparked plenty of interest in what making moonshine is actually like.

Apparently, that process even includes the essential use of a raccoon pecker. Latest Moonshiners News and Updates : Moonshiners Use an Unusual Raccoon Bone When Distilling Their Liquor

What is the raccoon Baculum used for?

Known as the Texas Toothpick, it can also be used as a token of appreciation or love. Young suitors throughout the south have tied ribbons around raccoon baculum and given them to a love interest as a token of appreciation, and to help woo them.

What drug is in moonshine?

Consuming Methanol In Moonshine – Upon first sip, the dangerous potential of methanol is undetectable. It will simply get people drunker. However, after it is metabolized, the methanol can have an extremely harmful effect in someone’s body.10 milliliters (ml) of methanol is all it takes to permanently damage the optic nerve and cause partial, if not complete, blindness.30 ml of methanol is lethal.

For reference, and standard shot glass in the United States holds 40 ml. If less than 10 ml of methanol is consumed then the worst someone will experience is a hangover, (albeit, quite possibly the worst hangover of their life). However, if someone consumes 10 ml or more of methanol, even split up among drinks, that can be enough to cause permanent damage or kill them.

While there are processes today to discard the toxic alcohol that is visually indistinguishable from water, some illegal Moonshiners will add methanol back in to provide a stronger potency. Obviously, without regulation, there is no way to know if illicit alcohol contains methanol.

Do human males have a baculum bone?

Sign up for Scientific American ’s free newsletters. ” data-newsletterpromo_article-image=”https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/4641809D-B8F1-41A3-9E5A87C21ADB2FD8_source.png” data-newsletterpromo_article-button-text=”Sign Up” data-newsletterpromo_article-button-link=”https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/newsletter-sign-up/?origincode=2018_sciam_ArticlePromo_NewsletterSignUp” name=”articleBody” itemprop=”articleBody”> The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. One of the most weird and wonderful products of evolution is the penis bone, or baculum. The baculum is an extra-skeletal bone, which means it is not attached to the rest of the skeleton but instead floats daintily at the end of the penis. Depending on the animal, bacula range in size from under a millimetre to nearly a metre long, and in shape, varying from needle-like spines to fork like prongs.

The walrus baculum, which could easily be mistaken for a 2ft-long club, is around a sixth of its body length, whereas the diminutive centimetre-long baculum of the ring-tailed lemur is only around a 40th of its body length. Bacula are found in certain species of mammal, but not all. Most primate males have a baculum, so humans are rather an oddity in that they don’t have one.

In a handful of extraordinary circumstances human males have formed bones in the soft tissue at the end of their penises, but this is a rare abnormality, rather than a baculum. In a new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, my colleague Kit Opie and I examined how the baculum developed in mammals by studying how it is distributed across different species in light of their pattern of descent (known as phylogenetics).

• We showed that the baculum first evolved after placental and non-placental mammals split, around 145m years ago, but before the most recent common ancestor of primates and carnivores evolved, around 95m years ago.
• Our research also shows that the common ancestor of primates and carnivores had a baculum.

This means that any species in these groups without a baculum, such as humans, must have lost it over the course of evolution. So, why on earth would an animal need a bone in their penis in the first place? Scientists have come up with a few theories as to why a baculum might be handy.

In certain species, such as cats, a female’s body doesn’t release its eggs until she mates, and some argue that the baculum may help to stimulate females and trigger ovulation, Another, somewhat colourfully named, theory is the vaginal friction hypothesis, This essentially argues that the baculum acts as a shoehorn, enabling a male to overcome any friction and squeeze himself into a female.

Finally, it has been proposed that the baculum helps prolong intromission, otherwise known as vaginal penetration. Far from simply being a nice way to spend an afternoon, prolonging intromission like this is a way for a male to prevent a female from sneaking off and mating with anyone else before his sperm have had a chance to work their magic.

• This theory brings a whole new meaning to the term “cock-blocking”.
• We found that, over the entire course of primate evolution, having a baculum was linked to longer intromission durations (anything over three minutes).
• On top of this, males of primate species with longer intromission durations tend to have far longer bacula than males of species where intromission is short.

Another interesting discovery was that males of species facing high levels of sexual competition for females have longer bacula than those facing lower levels of sexual competition. But what about humans? If the penis bone is so important in competing for a mate and prolonging copulation, then why don’t we have one? Well, the short answer to that is that humans don’t quite make it into the “prolonged intromission” category.

• The average duration from penetration to ejaculation for human males is less than two minutes,
• But bonobos only copulate for about 15 seconds at a time and they still have a baculum, even if it is very small (about 8mm).
• So what makes us different? It’s possible that this comes down to our mating strategies.

Human males (generally) have minimal sexual competition as females typically only mate with one male at a time. Perhaps the adoption of this mating pattern, in addition to our short intromission duration, was the last straw for the baculum. Scientists are only just beginning to piece together the function of this most unusual bone.

What seems to be clear is that changes in the primate baculum are driven, at least partly, by a species’ mating strategy. The picture that seems to be emerging is that, under high levels of sexual competition, bigger is better when it comes to the penis bone. This article was originally published on The Conversation,

Read the original article,

What can you do with baculum?

Function – The baculum is used for copulation and varies in size and shape by species, Its evolution may be influenced by sexual selection, and its characteristics are sometimes used to differentiate between similar species. A bone in the penis allows a male to mate for a long time with a female, which can be a distinct advantage in some mating strategies,

How do you clean a raccoon baculum?

Degreasing – As an animal decomposes fats and lipids are soaked into the bone. These cause a yellow to brown discoloration. If you whiten bones immediately, they can appear to be fully processed only for grease to emerge later, possibly much later. Soak bones in a bath of soapy water.

• Dawn brand is often used.
• Colored soaps can be used, but carry a small risk of discoloration.
• Publix brand blue dish soap was used for this specimen with no issues.
• When a specimen is very dirty, it is helpful to whiten it overnight in peroxide to remove surface stains, then move it to the soap bath.
• Grease will cause the water to become cloudy.

This process can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. Older and fatter animals take longer, and certain species take longer. Heat of around 115 °F (45–50 °C) can speed up the process, as well as changing to new water when cloudy. But do not boil it, boiling water causes bone damage and the grease to be drawn into the bone and emerge later.

While changing water, be sure to drain the bone through a fine mesh to avoid losing teeth and small bones. Canines and incisors seem to fall out easily, always drain the water through a seive to avoid losing bones. If the bones are handled much, it is important to remove most—but not all of—the grease, as complete removal makes them brittle.

In this case the raccoon bones were left in for two weeks in warm weather (only time will tell if grease will emerge!). Much of the grease has been removed, now it’s time to whiten

Does moonshine have stuff floating in it?

Tails are rich in fusel oils, which cause unwanted tastes in your product. Some times you can see an oily film on top of the collected tails. Some parts of the tails, if left for a day or so, will start to develop floating crystalline things. This is all highly undesirable in your product.

Why do you pour out the first bit of moonshine?

Why is Methanol A Concern for Distillers? – If wine contains methanol but doesn’t pose a risk of methanol poisoning then why is it potentially dangerous to drink once distilled? The difference is that the methanol concentration in, say, 5 gallons of wine, is evenly distributed among the 5 gallons.

1. For someone to ingest a potentially dangerous amount they would need to ingest more than 5 gallons.or 28 bottles! During the distillation process methanol is concentrated at the start of the production run because it has a lower boiling point than ethanol and water.
2. The boiling point of methanol is approximately 148 degrees farenheit, which is quite a bit lower than ethanol (the good stuff).

This means that methanol (148F boiling temp) will start to boil before the ethanol (174F boiling temp). This is why commercial distillers always throw out the first bit of shine they produce from each production run (more on this below). Here are a few examples of the dangers of methanol :

If 5 gallons of wine containing the abovementioned concentration of methanol (329mg/L) were distilled, there could be as much as 8 mL of methyl alcohol in the first jar – a potentially dangerous amount. Scale this up to a 100 gallon batch, distilled all at the same time in a large still, and a commercial distiller could potentially have a very big problem if the methanol was not discarded. Distilling 100 gallons of wine containing 329 mg/L of methanol could result in the concentration of 40ml of methanol, which could be fatal if someone drank it all at once.