Though, whiskey is a bit more expensive compared to moonshine, it is considered as a much safer and milder option. These days, because of the bulk purchasing and manufacturing, cost of alcohol has gone down significantly resulting in moonshine to slowly becoming obsolete in many places.
Difference between Moonshine and Whiskey. Key Difference: Moonshine is any type of alcohol that is produced illegally. The produced alcohol was most commonly whiskey or rum. Whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from any form of fermented grain mash. Whiskies can further be classified under: Single malt whisky: is whisky that is from a single distillery and is made from a mash that uses only one particular type of malted grain.
Blended malt whisky: is a blend of different malt whiskies from different distilleries. Blended whiskies: is whiskey that is made from a mixture of malt and grain whiskies along with neutral spirits, caramel, and flavoring. Cask strength: These whiskies are bottled directly from the cask and are undiluted or only a little diluted. These are rare whiskies. Single cask: Each bottle of a single barrel whiskey is from an individual cask with the cask number labeled on the bottle.
Image Courtesy: pfiwestern. Add new comment Your name. Plain text. Not only was it produced illegally, but oftentimes it was done poorly, too—only contributing to its bad reputation. That's because it's not easy to make. It gets tricky to make moonshine that stands on its own, without the dominant oak characteristics that we usually think of when drinking a whiskey. When you can find the good stuff, you'll know why people love it.
He's part of a growing movement that's putting good—and legal—moonshine on the map. Of the new-age brands, a few stand above the rest. Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky creates a moonshine called White Dog, a moniker reflecting a colloquial nickname for the drink. With a sweet vanilla finish, it honors the first moonshine pioneers who distilled the clear and unaged spirit with a hint of sweet corn.
See the recipe for apple pie moonshine here. In Brooklyn's Pfizer building, you'll find Hrabowsky's Standard Wormwood Distillery , whose product is made with equal parts corn and rye , as opposed to the traditional Southern moonshine made strictly from corn.
Photo: Standard Wormwood Distillery. Although Hrabowsky believes the future of moonshine is unpredictable, he is delighted to see an uptick in craft distilleries pushing the boundaries to create sipping moonshines, eschewing a new era for the spirit.
It can be dangerous on two levels, both during the distilling process and when consuming it. The distilling process itself produces alcohol vapors, which are highly flammable. The flammable vapors are one major reason why moonshine stills are almost always located outside, although it makes them easier to be spotted by law enforcement. The threat of vaporous explosions is too great if confined inside.
In terms of consuming the liquid, if the final product is over proof, the moonshine itself is also extremely flammable and can be very dangerous. While the flammability of the distilling process and the product itself is a danger, more people have died from drinking moonshine than have died by explosions of stills due to the toxins in the brew.
Although many of the stills in operation today are the all-copper variety, there are plenty of the old handmade stills still around. Old stills use vehicle radiators in the distilling process, and they are apt to contain lead soldering, which can contaminate the moonshine.
The old radiators could also contain remnants of antifreeze glycol products which could also add toxins to the brew. In larger batches of distilled moonshine, tainting with methanol can also occur. Because methanol vaporizes at a lower temperature than alcohol, the first liquid produced by the distillation process can contain methanol. The larger the batch, the more methanol. Most moonshine makers today know to pour off those first drippings from the condenser, also known as the foreshot, but not all of them know or do it.
Methanol is highly poisonous and can cause blindness and even death. In a study, Dr. Christopher Holstege, a physician with the University of Virginia Health System, tested 48 samples of moonshine obtained by law enforcement from different stills. The doctor found lead contamination in 43 of the samples. Folklore tells us one way to test the purity of moonshine is to pour some in a metal spoon and set it on fire.
But the spoon burning method is not completely reliable. This test does not detect other toxins that might be in the brew, like methanol, which burns with a light blue flame that is hard to see. With millions of gallons of moonshine being produced each year in the United States, chances are some of it is going to be tainted.
Health officials are concerned that moonshine toxicity in ailing patients might be overlooked because most healthcare providers consider it a tradition of the past.
As far as historians can tell, brewing alcohol has been around since the beginning of mankind. Moonshine, specifically, is believed to have been introduced in the southern Appalachian region of the U. According to Appalachian anthropologists, the Scotch-Irish immigrants who migrated to the region in the late s and early s brought with them their tradition of home brewing and their recipe for the high-potency hooch.
Therefore, it can be hidden from the police or thirsty neighbors," according to Jason Sumich, Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University. No matter what it started with. Note that I wrote "placed" and not "aged" in oak.
Whiskey has no age requirement, so the "white whiskeys" you see that do not read "moonshine" have at least touched oak. If you see that the label reads "moonshine whiskey", it has touched oak too, if it just reads "moonshine" and has not ever touched an oak barrel, then technically is it strong grain vodka, but "moonshine" sounds more renegade I suppose. Thanks to the Bottle-in-bond Act of I believe that it's called moonshine because it was illegal to make, so it was usually distributed at night time under the moonlight hence the name 'Moonshine'.
Moonshiners did not adhere to these rules hence why the drink was illegal. In places where moonshine has been legalized I would not consider it moonshine anymore as that just means they have allowed the distillers to bottle after any time they want in the processes instead of giving a set time for minimum distillation. There are some legal Moonshine distilleries that label their alcohol as moonshine but most of these are playing on the growing trend of moonshine as all of these are still legit distilleries.
They pay all the taxes and ship out there product so this is perfectly legal and they call it moonshine. While this is not a original moonshine, as it is all legal. Moonshine can be any really high proof alcohol but once that alcohol is sold and distributed legally it just becomes the same as any-other spirit and loses the true nature of being moonshine.
Moonshine was made a lot in the mountains because of the inaccessibility of where the mountain-folk would hide the Stills and the abundance of fresh mountain springs. There is not commercial grade proof moonshine mainly because of physics.
Instead of boiling purely and separately at two different temperatures, its vapor will form a certain proportion. Steam from alcohol is Get a pot of There are probably other moonshiners across the country; but, the origin is steeped in the Appalachian Mountains. If you want to be a traditionalist, it's not really Moonshine unless it was produced illegally, without all the proper taxes and such.
Anything you buy in the store could more accurately be called white liquor, grain liquor or corn liquor, depending on the mash stock. A key feature of both legally and illegally produced Moonshine is that it's unaged.
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