On 8/10/2017 9:55 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 8/10/2017 8:47 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 10 Aug 2017 07:48:47 -0500, AMuzi
wrote:

On 8/9/2017 10:47 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:53:45 +0700, John B
wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:

You can buy "moonshine" branded products in liquor
stores, packaged in
canning jars and all. I've never tasted it.

:-) I have :-) and "corn whiskey" as usually sold by
bootleggers is
not that flavorful, in fact it has, as mentioned by the
supreme court,
no socially redeeming qualities, but on the other hand
it is cheap
and, if you know your source, probably 50% or more
alcohol.

Well, the purpose might not be the taste experience.
Knowing next to
nothing about moonshine I looked around on the web this
afternoon, which
has resulted in my probably knowing less than nothing
now. It sounds
like a fair amount of moonshine is made from a sugar
base rather than a
grain base; when grain is used, seems like corn (maize)
is the usual
staple. Frank mentioned poitin (Irish moonshine,
pronounced
"puh-cheen") which unsurprisingly is often made from
potatos; there are
commercial versions stocked at the local liquor store
but I've never
tried them. Other than a few selected whiskeys and
occasionally aquavit
(my wife's family is Danish), liquor holds little
interest for me; I
prefer beer or wine as a beverage. Don't like cocktails.

But then single malt scotch, right out of the still, is
also pretty
retched stuff :-) -- Cheers,

Most all the distilled alcohols are that way, until they
are aged and
flavored with barrel aging like the whiskeys, decoctions
like gin and
aquavit, etc. I have no idea what happens with vodka,
if there is any
aging benefit for the non-flavored versions. I have
read that virtually
all of the vodkas sold in the US come from one of two
sources- Archer
Daniels Midland and another big agrabusinessthat I can't
remember
offhand. They are the biggest distillers in the country
and sell the
stuff by the tanker load to be bottled and packaged for
very profitable
resale at various price points. $15 a bottle or $100 a
bottle, the odds
are pretty good it's the same vodka.


I have actually made corm whiskey. It's an amazingly slow
and tedious[1] process with a shortbed pickup of corn
yielding less than one pint[2] and there's the cost of sugar
as well. Once was plenty.

To make growing corn and selling alcohol a paying
proposition would require either a huge capital investment
or a very low value for one's labor.

[1]Machinery would probably make shucking/shelling/mashing
faster.
[2]I make no claim of expertise or efficiency. Since the
boiling point of methanol is only slightly higher than
ethanol, the prudent fellow will quit while still ahead.

Originally it was probably something that a farmer did in
the fall,
but I think there was something wrong with either your
formula or the
way you malted the corn. I can't say for corn but barley
is about 2
gallons of alcohol per bushel of grain.

I wonder about that low yield, too, although I'm not into
moonshine at all.

I know that the first settlers west of the Appalachian
mountains had intense trouble getting any of their grain to
markets back east. So they got into the practice of
distilling, since whiskey made more sense to ship east. It
had a much higher value per pound or per barrel. They used
it in barter, too.

Trouble was, the new federal government needed cash, so they
decided to tax the heck out of the moonshine. The settlers
rebelled (justifiably, I think) and Washington sent American
troops against American settlers to put down the "Whiskey
Rebellion."

If the settlers could get only a pint out of a wagon load of
corn, I doubt all that would have happened.



I'm sure improvements could be achieved.

My neighbor's girlfriend had rented a garden plot but moved
out before the snow melted so he planted his section with
corn. After chatting up a guy at work he was motivated to
make moonshine and I was drafted to help. Neither of us had
any special knowledge and although it was a debacle the
passage of time makes it amusing now. That was in 1975.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971