In English, moonshine is also known as mountain dew, choop, hooch (abbreviation of hoochinoo, name of a specific liquor, from Tlingit), homebrew, mulekick, shine, white dog, white lightning, white/corn liquor, white/corn whiskey, pass around, firewater, and bootleg.
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What is the original moonshine?
Original MOONSHINE® Clear Corn Whiskey is hand-crafted from 100% estate-grown corn and distilled four times in a Prohibition-era copper pot still – in the same authentic tradition that moonshine has been made for hundreds of years.
Was there moonshine during Prohibition?
During Prohibition, profit-hungry moonshiners started using white sugar instead of corn meal, producing a cheaper product that was technically rum, not whisky. Fruits could also be used instead of grains — today, moonshiners in Appalachian states still manufacture apple brandy.
What is the history of moonshine?
In the South, tracking down and drinking moonshine is a rite of passage. Whether it’s the booze’s rebellious history or its dangerous reputation. Moonshine has cemented a place in the culture at large. Moonshine defines as “whiskey or other strong alcoholic drinks made and sold illegally,” With that definition, it may be confusing to walk into liquor stores and find booze labeled as moonshine,
Part of the problem lies in the lack of federal requirements for labeling something as moonshine, Unlike whiskey, which you must from grain, distilled and bottled at a certain alcohol content, and aged in oak, ‘shine has no equal, Like vodka, you can make it from anything fermentable: fruit, sugar, grain, or milk.
Like vodka, there’s no upper limit on its alcohol content. Unless you want to describe it as white whiskey on the label, you can make it any way you please. So, despite what you might have read in the OED, legally made hooch labeled “moonshine” is all over the place.
Despite its super Southern connotation, hooch isn’t only a Southern drink. The term moonshine has been around since the late 15th century. But, it was first used to refer to liquor in the 18th century in England. The American roots of the practice have their origins in frontier life in Pennsylvania, Also, other grain-producing states.
At the time, farms with grain mills would distill their excess product so that it wouldn’t spoil. Back then, whiskey was even used in some places as currency. In 1791, the federal government imposed a tax on liquor made in the country, known as the “whiskey tax.” For the next three years, distillers held off the tax collectors by less-than-legal means,
This brought a U.S. marshal to Pennsylvania to collect the taxes owed. More than 500 men attacked the area’s tax inspector general’s home. Their commander was then killed, which inspired a protest of nearly 6000 people. The tax repealed in 1801, and the events from the decade prior came to be the Whiskey Rebellion.
A lot of the lore and legend surrounding moonshine is true. Bad batches or certain production techniques (like distilling in car radiators) could result in liquor that could make you go blind—or worse, Some moonshiners claim that these stories were an effort to discredit their work.
- Legal producers differ.
- Either way, the federal government commissioned Louis Armstrong to record radio ads about the dangers of drinking it,
- You should see all the Moonshine we have in our store,
- Don’t confuse moonshiners with bootleggers.
- Moonshiners make the liquor, while bootleggers smuggle it.
- The term bootlegger refers to the habit of hiding flasks in the boot tops around the 1880s.
But, with the introduction of cars, it came to mean anyone who smuggled booze. Mechanics found ways to soup up engines and modify cars to hide and transport as much moonshine as possible, In running from the law, these whiskey runners acquired some serious driving skills.
- On their off days, they’d race against each other, a pastime that would eventually breed NASCAR.
- The two were so closely linked, in fact, that a moonshiner gave seed money for NASCAR to its founder Bill France.
- Another well-known link is Robert Glenn Johnson, better known as Junior Johnson.
- As the son of a notorious moonshiner, this former driver and NASCAR team owner recently partnered with a North Carolina-based distillery to produce “Midnight Moon,” Whether you call it “shine”, rotgut, white lightning, firewater, skull pop, mountain dew, or moonshine,
Its rebellious history and contentious present make it a helluva drink. If you want to learn more about the History of Moonshine, please follow Tennessee Shine. CO.
What is the origin of the name moonshine?
England Circa 18th Century – The origin of the word as we know it today comes from England in the 18 th century. It’s meaning derives from the notion of light without heat, or light from the moon. It meant illicit or smuggled liquor. Moonshiner was a term that described any persons doing illegal activities under the cover of darkness. It could mean anything – robbery, burglary, grave robbing.
What was moonshine called?
In English, moonshine is also known as mountain dew, choop, hooch (abbreviation of hoochinoo, name of a specific liquor, from Tlingit), homebrew, mulekick, shine, white dog, white lightning, white/corn liquor, white/corn whiskey, pass around, firewater, and bootleg.
Was everyone drunk before Prohibition?
Consumption begins to drop – The Prohibition movement began in the early 1800s based on noble ideas such as boosting savings, reducing domestic violence, and improving family life. At the time, alcohol usage was soaring in the United States. Some estimates by alcohol opponents put consumption at three times what it is today,
- Activists thought that prohibiting its sale would curb excess drinking.
- Their efforts were very effective.
- But while Prohibition is often portrayed as a sharp change that happened with one last national call for drinks just before the stroke of midnight on January 16, thousands of towns throughout the country had gone dry well before that,
More bans took effect during World War I in an effort to save grain. So to consider the impact of Prohibition on drinking habits, it’s a good idea to start in the years leading up to it. And given that beer, wine, and spirits all have different alcohol content, we’ll use the number of “standard” drinks a person consumes to make our comparison.
- A standard drink contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol.
- This is the amount of spirits in a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 1.5-ounce shot of hard liquor.
- From 1900 until 1915—five years before the 18th Amendment passed—the average adult drank about 2.5 gallons of pure alcohol a year, which is about 13 standard drinks per week.
Consumption fell sharply by 1916, with the average falling to two gallons a year, or 10 drinks a week. The Prohibition movement and the local dry laws that preceded it appeared to already be having an impact.
What alcohol was popular during Prohibition?
New Spirits on the Scene – And yet, an era defined by banning alcohol led to developments in the drinking world, too. “During Prohibition, alcohol that could be smuggled over the nation’s borders grew more popular—tequila from the south and Canadian whisky from the north,” says Camper English, cocktail and spirits writer who wrote about several “upsides” of Prohibition on his site Alcademics,
- Even after Prohibition was repealed, those effects lingered.
- Canadian whisky surged in popularity,” says Gareth Evans.
- After repeal, consumers rushed to buy alcohol again, but America’s favorite spirit—whiskey—needs to be aged.
- There wasn’t enough stock to satisfy demand.
- So thirsty Americans turned their eyes North.” Produced throughout the Caribbean, rum became another attractive option.
“Rum was extremely popular during Prohibition, especially in New York,” says Kenneth McCoy, Partner at The Rum House, And while in the Northeast, rum was smuggled into the city, Americans closer to the Caribbean (or those of ample means) went right to the source.
- Prohibition drove many wealthy Americans to Cuba and other tropical ports in search of rum-based cocktails,” says Camper English.
- Spirits brands were savvy enough to encourage this kind of booze tourism through marketing—and a little glad-handing.
- Bacardi recognized an opportunity to bring Americans to its home of Cuba to teach them about rum and cocktail culture,” according to Rachel Dorion, a fifth-generation member of the Bacardi family.
“The company responded with postcards—the 1920s version of a social media campaign—to put the tropical paradise of rum on the map.” Bacardi sent bartender Pappy Valiente to the airport to actually greet incoming guests with a daiquiri in-hand. Thus cocktails like the daiquiri and the mojito, still popular today, became familiar through Prohibition; Bacardi itself, now the best-selling rum in the United States, did too.
And the accelerated production of rum during Prohibition led to a cocktail movement that’s still popular today—tiki culture. “Rum-centric tiki bars first opened right after Prohibition in the 1930s, but really took off after WWII ended in the 1940s,” explains Camper English. “In this tumultuous era of uneven supply, a lot of rum sat around aging in casks.” And with delicious aged rum so plentiful, enterprising bar owners found a way to use it.
“When Trader Vic created the Mai Tai in 1944, it was first made with 17-year-old rum from Jamaica. Blended rum from multiple islands became one of the signatures of tiki drinks.”
Who made the first moonshine?
Moonshine’s Not Just a Southern Thing – Courtesy Zenith Press While moonshine is deeply rooted in Southern culture and heritage, its origins, in fact, can be traced to Pennsylvania. Farmer-distillers in the western part of the state protested when the federal government passed the distilled-spirits tax in 1791.
They tarred and feathered tax collectors and fired upon their homes. These actions sparked the Whiskey Rebellion and nearly set off America’s first civil war. Moonshine production later took hold in big cities. In Brooklyn, the waterfront neighborhood known today as Vinegar Hill was a hotbed of illegal whiskey making.
In 1869, law enforcement went hard and fast against the Irish immigrants who’d set up hidden distilleries there and refused to pay government taxes on their product. In a predawn raid they hacked up stills, confiscated whiskey, and hauled it back to the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Of course, this didn’t stop people from making booze. By the early 1900s, more moonshine was produced in New York City than in all the South combined. During Prohibition, a one-day sweep in Chicago, in June, 1925, resulted in 50 raids, 320 arrests, and 10,000 gallons of seized liquor. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Genna crime family had brought laborers over from Italy “to distill moonshine.” Meanwhile, Prohibition agents in Los Angeles found inside a five-room ranch house a 250-gallon still and 800 gallons of mash, the soupy, fermented grain that’s used to make the liquor.
A story in the New York Times reported moonshine being made in San Francisco, Oregon, and Washington State.
Was moonshine called mountain dew?
Packaging – A 1950s Mountain Dew advertisement sign in Tonto, Arizona, showing the cartoon character “Willie the Hillbilly” “Mountain Dew” was originally Southern and/or slang for (i.e., homemade whiskey or ), as referenced in the Irish folk song “”, dating from 1882.
What do the Irish call moonshine?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bottles of legally produced poitín | |
| Type | Distilled beverage |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | Ireland |
| Alcohol by volume | variable, 40–90% |
| Proof (US) | variable, 80°–180° |
| Colour | Colourless |
| Flavour | burning, grainy, oily, toffee |
| Ingredients | oats, water (optional: whey, grain, sugar beet, molasses, potatoes, sugar ) |
| Related products | potato vodka, Irish whiskey |
Poitín ( Irish pronunciation: ), anglicized as poteen () or potcheen, is a traditional Irish distilled beverage (40–90% ABV ). Former common names for Poitín were “Irish moonshine” and “mountain dew”. It was traditionally distilled in a small pot still and the term is a diminutive of the Irish word pota, meaning “pot”.
What is Scottish moonshine called?
Moonshine The Whiskey Still at Lochgilphead, Sir David Wilkie, 1819 “Oh they call it that good ole mountain dew And them that refuse it are few I’ll hush up my mug if you’ll fill up my jug With that good ole mountain dew.” ~ “Good Old Mountain Dew”, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, 1928 Whether you call it shine, rotgut, white lightning, firewater, skullpop, mountain dew, or white whisky (or in Scotland, “peatreek”), the catchall term for illegally made liquor, “moonshine” has been around since the 15th century.
- Moonshine” (unaged spirits illicitly distilled “by the light of the moon”) is thought to be inspired by “moonrakers,” a name for apocryphal brandy smugglers who raked up hidden kegs from ponds.
- When caught, they pretended to be fools attempting to rake cheese from the reflection of the moon.
- Unlike traditional whiskies, which must be made from grain, distilled and bottled at a certain alcohol content, moonshine has no equivalent standards and can be made from anything fermentable: fruit, sugar, grain, or milk, with no upper limit on its un-aged alcohol content! The “XXX” on a jug of moonshine means three times through the still, almost pure alcohol! 🌔 The word “moonshine” is believed to be derived from the term ” ” early English smugglers who distilled untaxed spirits by night to avoid discovery.
Moonshine refers to any untaxed liquor. Over time it has also been known as Mountain Dew, White Lightning, Rotgut, Skullpop, and Firewater, with every country having its own special term, such as Scotland, where it is sometimes referred to as “peatreek.” Ulster- brought their recipes with them to the American colonies, and their “white whisky”, which was not aged, became the traditional method of distilling spirits in the Appalachian Mountains.
Two of the more popular American spirits during the first century and a half of colonization were peach brandy and applejack (a brandy distilled from cider). The still popular Laird’s Applejack traces its roots to highlander William Laird who settled in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in 1698 and set about applying his knowledge of distillation to apples rather than barley malt. As settlers moved west, rye and corn became the preferred grains for the production of American moonshine.
Moonshiners have a long history of flouting authority and avoiding the excise men. Since the Revolutionary War, distilled spirits have been taxed at a higher rate, incensing the corn growers who used excess grain for distillation as whisky was also easier to transport.
In 1791, George Washington approved an excise tax on liquor, just four years after Britain had introduced a similar prohibitive tax on Highland stills in Scotland. This was the first tax on a domestic product under the newly formed government leading to the violent Whiskey rebellion of 1794. For more on alleged Scots origins of Appalachian cultural terms such as “hillbilly,” “redneck” and “cracker”, click the photo of The Moonshiner’s Daughter, c.1900-1910, from the Library of Congress.
Or,, : Moonshine
What is traditional moonshine made of?
How is Moonshine Made? – The traditional ingredients for moonshine are corn and sugar, and during fermentation, the sugar produces ethanol, which makes hooch or moonshine. During distillation, alcohol separates from the mash. Unlike other liquors such as whiskey or bourbon, moonshine is unaged, which produces a distilled spirit with high alcohol content.
- The stereotype of moonshiners centers around how “country folk” distill and transport their potables in jugs marked “XXX” during the night to avoid being detected.
- But having access to commercially produced all-copper moonshine stills on the internet has made moonshine distillation less risky in the modern era.
But for a great drink, here is the recipe:
