Making Moonshine at Home
Making Moonshine at Home
Moonshine is an un-aged whiskey, traditionally clear yet with a hint of corn. It is a perfect drink to sip or use as substitute in cocktails. The varieties of Moonshine are different, depending on the distillation process and the number of times the spirit is run through the still. Moonshine is a drink that is easy to make at home if you have the inclination, practice, and patience.
Interestingly making Moonshine at home is considered illegal in most states, as a result of which moonshiners and bootleggers use code words to refer to the art of moonshine. A bootlegger is one who sells illegal moonshine, and a moonshiner is one who makes moonshine illegally.
Moonshine is referred to as panther’s breath, sugar whiskey, mule kick, tiger’s sweat, and many more. The practice has so far been quite hush-hush as the moonshiners do not want the law on their backs.
The basic ingredients of water, malt, corn meal, yeast, and sugar, which when mixed is called as mash. The duration of the fermentation will depend on how warm or hot the mash is. The mixture should be heated to approximately 173 degrees after which it turns into a dark clear liquid after which care must be taken.
The vapor now has to be trapped with the help of a tube or coil and transferred into a second container. The condensed vapor is the moonshine which is ready to be drunk and also sold. The leftover mash in the first container can be reused by adding fresh ingredients to it up to as much as eight times for further yields of moonshine.
Making Moonshine at home is a fairly easy procedure. The items required are a steamer or crock pot, a copper tube of about 5 feet length, a large plastic milk bottle with a lid, a container to store the moonshine, some sealant for water-proofing, coffee filters, charcoal and carpentry tools.
You can select a moonshine recipe from Gert Strand AB at allfreightfree.com and partymanshop.com.
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You will need to make a hole in the lid of the crock pot and insert one end of the copper tube into it. Drill a hole into the lid of the plastic milk bottle and insert the other end of the copper tube into it. Towards the end of the milk bottle about an inch or two from the bottom you need to make another hole for the tube to come out. The tube should now enter the container. The hole in the container should be large enough to feed ice into the container. It is essential to ensure that all gaps at which point the tube enters or leaves the lids are well sealed with a waterproof sealant. The pot should be filled with the ingredients and the container filled with the ice up to 2/3rds of the bottle. The mash should be cooked at around 175 to 200 degrees F.
Making moonshine needs proper monitoring of the distilling process. Ice cubes need to be added to avoid the plastic bottle from melting. Frequent sampling too is necessary for perfection.