Moonshine why

Without proper training and licenses, people attempting to make and distil their own spirits are not aware of the proper use of its primary ingredient - ethanol. Jump directly to the content. Sign in. All Football. They needed to keep every penny they made. They distilled their alcohol late at night, in the darkness, with only the light of the moon lighting their way. Hence, the term moonshine became associated solely with the illegal spirits these moonshiners made.

When you think of moonshine, you probably think of white, un-aged whiskey made from corn mash. During the Prohibition area, there was great demand for alcohol and moonshiners got greedy. So to make a cheaper product and get more cash from their sales, they started making batches of alcohol with white sugar instead of corn mash, which was technically rum, not whiskey. Some even switch out grains completely for fruits. Moonshine is also referred by other alternative names although the commonly used word is the moonshine itself.

Here's a small collection of names in which you may have heard before. See if you can recognize any of them:. Why Is Moonshine Called Moonshine? British Beginnings The name originally came from Britain where the verb moonshining was used. Hard times Moonshiners began illegally making their alcohol the time the US enacted a high tax on high-distilled spirits made by its citizens to fund the civil war.

Operations in the Backwoods The moonshiners began to undertake their activities in the deep of the backwoods where it was hard to locate them to avoid being caught by the authorities. What Else Is Moonshine Called? I didn't need convincing: Before I reached the double digits, he let me smell the contents of the jar.

Needless to say, I recoiled instantly, thinking : Who would drink this? The answer, of course, ranges from whiskey lovers to cocktail fiends , with moonshine becoming increasingly popular over the last decade, outliving its reputation as a potent liquor that could leave you dead, blind or paralyzed.

So what exactly is moonshine, and how did it go from one of the most illicit liquors in the United States to one winning the hearts of mixologists and craft distillers? Photo: Valery Rizzo. Moonshine purists define the spirit as a homemade, unaged whiskey, marked by its clear color, corn base and high alcohol content—sometimes peaking as high as proof.

Traditionally, it was produced in a homemade still and bottled in a mason jar. Scottish and Irish immigrants, many who settled in the southeastern throngs of the country, first brought moonshine to the United States in the 18th century. The spirit quickly became a mainstay of Southern culture. It was Alexander Hamilton who imposed a tax on whiskey production in , making any untaxed moonshine production illegal.

Whiskey drinkers avoided taxation by making and buying moonshine at night, under the cover of darkness and the light of the moon—which some suspect gave rise to its name. Just as Prohibition led to a rise in underground bars in the s, the illegalization of untaxed moonshine production spawned generations of illicit whiskey producers for the next two-hundred years.