How long should caliper brake springs last?

On 8/10/2017 11:25 AM, Doug Landau wrote:
On Wednesday, August 9, 2017 at 6:40:17 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 8/9/2017 7:46 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2017 11:15:43 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

Alcohol is tapped out, you can buy anything from non-alcoholic beer to
hardcore high-ABV liquor. Moonshiners can't offer much in "benefits"
even for alcoholics.

Moonshiners offer ready availability in dry counties, which are more
prevalent in the southern US and not coincidentally moonshiners are mre
prevalent in the south. So there is that. Since it isn't taxed, I
wonder if moonshine is cheaper than buying cheap booze at the liquor
store. Given how cheap the lowest tier liquors are, that's hard to
picture.

Perhaps the real allure of moonshine is that it's illegal and has an
outlaw image of freedom that appeals to some.

I think that's true. I've had Irish friends proudly offer me "poitÃ*n"
(or poteen, basically moonshine with an Oirish accent). It was obvious
they enjoyed the naughtiness of it.

A few weeks ago some friends and I played music for a private party. It
took place in a private pavilion built on a private lake behind a big
mansion. We were told to help ourselves to the food and drink, and I saw
a couple wine bottles with taped-on labels that said "Not water." I
thought it was wine and poured a glass, then found it was almost
certainly flammable.

The hosts could afford any liquor they wanted, but I think they enjoyed
the naughtiness of the moonshine.

Having a private lake in your backyard tends to play head games with you



Hey that makes two of us on RBT who follow SA politics!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...hot-water.html

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

On 8/9/2017 10:39 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:


A few years ago there was a fashion for heavily advertised high-caffeine
alcoholic drinks. These were alleged to be worse for (particularly
young) drinkers than the usual run of drinks, and were banned. They
disappeared from the market.

Wait - you mean that prohibition worked?

--
- Frank Krygowski

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 8/9/2017 10:39 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:


A few years ago there was a fashion for heavily advertised high-caffeine
alcoholic drinks. These were alleged to be worse for (particularly
young) drinkers than the usual run of drinks, and were banned. They
disappeared from the market.

Wait - you mean that prohibition worked?

In one restricted case, yes. By controlling the alcohol market the
state has some huge leverage on manufacturers and distributors. If they
do not follow the rules they have to compete in a black market, which is
difficult and dangerous.

If customers really wanted alco-speedballs so much that they were
willing to buy on the black market then someone would supply them. At
it happens the demand is not that strong.

There are certainly other cases -- 190 proof alcohol is illegal for sale
as a beverage in my state, absinthe has only recently been legalized,
there are *many* restrictions, some sensible, some not, on how, when,
and where alcohol may be sold. Acquiring a license to sell is
frequently expensive and tedious.

If regulation does not go too far, a regulated market is more attractive
than an unregulated (psychopaths excepted).

--

On Thursday, August 10, 2017 at 2:30:27 PM UTC-7, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 8/9/2017 10:39 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:


A few years ago there was a fashion for heavily advertised high-caffeine
alcoholic drinks. These were alleged to be worse for (particularly
young) drinkers than the usual run of drinks, and were banned. They
disappeared from the market.

Wait - you mean that prohibition worked?

In one restricted case, yes. By controlling the alcohol market the
state has some huge leverage on manufacturers and distributors. If they
do not follow the rules they have to compete in a black market, which is
difficult and dangerous.

If customers really wanted alco-speedballs so much that they were
willing to buy on the black market then someone would supply them. At
it happens the demand is not that strong.

There are certainly other cases -- 190 proof alcohol is illegal for sale
as a beverage in my state, absinthe has only recently been legalized,
there are *many* restrictions, some sensible, some not, on how, when,
and where alcohol may be sold. Acquiring a license to sell is
frequently expensive and tedious.

If regulation does not go too far, a regulated market is more attractive
than an unregulated (psychopaths excepted).

Everclear 190 proof is legal in Oregon. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission acts as the sole distributor of hard alcohol in Oregon. The state keeps the distributor's share, and the product is otherwise untaxed to the consumer. Prices net higher than California and lower than Washington where the state got out of the distribution business and just imposed a huge tax on sales. I think it is a good system, and voters actually refused to allow privatization after seeing what happened in Washington.

-- Jay Beattie.

Tim McNamara writes:

On Wed, 09 Aug 2017 22:39:36 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Many, perhaps most people who use opiods are addicts, which means that
they regularly use a drug just to feel normal.

Professionally I have been dealing with the opioid epidemic for damn
near 20 years. It only became a recent crisis when nice middle class
white folks started turning to heroin out in the suburbs. As long as
the primary victims were poor and/or non-white, nobody really gave much
of a crap at the policy level. Once it hit the likely voter pool, then
the narrative changed.

Sorry, a bit cynical these days.

Not wrong, but the proposed solution for those poor addicts would have
been even more stop and frisk, longer prison terms, &c. Probably just
as well not to have the publicity.

Saying that "most people who use opioids are addicts" is a gross
generalization and is simply not true. However, these are all highly
addictive drugs- from codeine to fentanyl and heroin, etc.- and starting
to use them at all carries a risk of addiction. It is simply the
biology of the drugs in the human body and few people are immune to the
potential. If you take a single first dose of oxycodone today, there is
a measurable risk that a year from now you will still be taking it (my
recollection is that the risk is about 6%). Take it for a week and the
risk is higher; take it for a month and the risk is higher; take if for
a year and the risk of addiction is higher still.

I was sloppy and imprecise. If you ask, out of all the individuals that
have taken at least one non-medical opioid dose in the past year, how
many are addicts, then you're certainly right in that most of them are
not. On the other hand, if you ask about the past *day*, then most of
them are. Equivalently, you could take the marketing perspective and
ask out of all the doses consumed how many are taken by addicts, and I
suspect that most of them are.

Opioids are IMHO more addictive than alcohol, perhaps a bit less
addictive than nicotine (BTW, to my observation over 36 years of working
in mental health, the "gateway drugs" are cigarettes, whatever's in
mommy and daddy's medicine cabinet and alcohol. Roughly in that order.
Usually by the time people get to trying marijuana, they are already on
the substance abuse train. That said, marijuana is *not* a benign,
no-harm drug even if less damaging than others) and maybe on par with
meth and cocaine (especially crack cocaine).

Really? Methamphetamine on a par with cannabis? I find that a little
hard to square both with what I have read and what I have seen.

They may sometimes want something out of the ordinary, and are surely
on the low end of substance risk-averse scale, but usually they want
their usual dose of their usual drug. With fentanyl and similar new
narcotics, though, they run the risk of unexpectedly getting something
much stronger than usual.

Getting fentanyl and other ultra-potent narcotics is usually by
accident. Their heroin is adulerated and they have no way of knowing or
controlling the dose. You are right, though, in that addicts become
less risk-averse as they deal with withdrawal symptoms. Astonishing to
me, I have read interviews with addicts who go towards areas where more
ODs are happening because they feel it indicates a better quality
product. Yikes! That is dumb as a box of rocks to me.

I suspect that most of them were less risk-averse when they started,
but it's "any port in a storm" when they start feeling sick.

One of my high school classmates read a book on mushrooms, and found
psilocybe cubensis listed as "toxic". So he sought out other toxic
mushrooms, figuring they might be magic too. No idea whether he's still
alive ...

Imagine drinking your next beer not know whether or not it would have
the effect of a big glass of vodka, then multiply by a few orders of
magnitude. This kind of random quality control would never be
permitted in a market with any kind of regulation.

Sure it is. You can buy a beer at the bar with 4% alcohol by volume or
14%. Can't tell by looking if it's on tap and with many craft beer
styles the alcohol burn is masked. Most places these days list the ABV
on the beer list to help prevent someone erroneously buying a pint that
is the equivalent of three beers (and then having three more before
driving home). There is little to no regulation about the strength of
beer in many places. There is a beer in Scotland repored in the news
that had something like 35% alcohol, produced because the brewer was
****ed off at the government about some regulation or other.

You can certainly ask, and the more potent brews are almost always
served in smaller glasses.

I doubt that much of it is deliberate, it's just that fentanyl is
effective in microgram doses, and drug dealers aren't good enough at
measuring. Cops are now (justifiably) worried about suffering
overdoses simply through skin exposure.

Cops, EMTs, etc., have indeed suffered ODs from very minimal skin
contact with substances or from breathing contaminated dust. Some of
these narcotics are incredibly potent and life-threatening to humans.
Narcan is standard equipment at all times nowadays.

One popular route for medical administration is the dermal patch. A
postage stamp sized thing that can send a person from groaning in pain
to completely lit up just by sticking it on the skin.

--

John B. writes:

On Wed, 09 Aug 2017 22:39:36 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Joerg writes:

On 2017-08-09 11:03, Radey Shouman wrote:
Joerg writes:

On 2017-08-06 19:28, Radey Shouman wrote:
jbeattie writes:

On Sunday, August 6, 2017 at 1:24:21 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Sunday, August 6, 2017 at 9:53:01 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:

[...]

I think legalization would have to be done very carefully, though, as
part of a total package. And I think an essential part of the package
should be to stop glamorizing use of pot (let alone other drugs) as
fashionable and funny. It bothers me when comedians, films,
songs, etc.
glorify chemical-induced stupidity.

As Joerg pointed out - legalize one drug and you might as well
legalize them all because people will ALWAYS try the newer stronger
street drugs.

Alcohol is a drug -- more dangerous than cannabis. Alcohol destroys
more lives than all the illegal drugs put
together. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/chapter/causes_of_death Might as
well legalize heroin now.

If heroin had been legalized it is unlikely that fentanyl would be the
problem that it is. It certainly would not be sold, randomly, as heroin.


The drug dealing criminals would invent the next
"upgrade". Guaranteed. Those guys don't just give up their revenue
stream, roll over and play dead. It'll be a constant ratcheting up in
drug potency or, for the addicts, a death spiral.

But who would buy? ...


People who fall for the peer pressure thing. "You've got to try this
other stuff that the guy over there at the bar sells. It's cool,
man!". This is how people came to grief in the village where I lived
in the Netherlands.

Many, perhaps most people who use opiods are addicts, which means that
they regularly use a drug just to feel normal. They may sometimes want
something out of the ordinary, and are surely on the low end of
substance risk-averse scale, but usually they want their usual dose of
their usual drug. With fentanyl and similar new narcotics, though, they
run the risk of unexpectedly getting something much stronger than usual.

Imagine drinking your next beer not know whether or not it would have
the effect of a big glass of vodka, then multiply by a few orders of
magnitude. This kind of random quality control would never be permitted
in a market with any kind of regulation. I doubt that much of it is
deliberate, it's just that fentanyl is effective in microgram doses, and
drug dealers aren't good enough at measuring. Cops are now
(justifiably) worried about suffering overdoses simply through skin
exposure.


Back in the day, this was fairly common in South East Asia. G.I's who
were used to cooking up a dose were sticking a needle in their arm and
dropping dead. An Air Force medic told me that quite often heroin sold
in Thailand or Vietnam was much less adulterated than that sold in the
U.S. and a dose that you could tolerate in the U.S. was large enough
to kill you in Asia.

A recent article in the Economist (I read it on dead trees, probably
online somewhere), claimed that fentanyl caused more damage in the
eastern part of the U.S. than the western, because western users were
accustomed to Mexican brown heroin, which has a distinctive color and
odor. They often turned up their noses at pure white powder, as it
wasn't what they were used to. In the East, on the other hand, white
heroin originating in Asia was the rule (adulturated before final sale,
of course, but always with something white).

Seemed plausible to me.


--

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.

As for methanol, distilling does not make methanol, it merely
concentrates any that is contained in the mash. Relatively small
amounts of methanol are produced in the first stages of the
distillation process. As methanol boils at a lower temperature then
ethanol the normal practice is to throw away the initial distilled
product - in a reflux still about the first 50 ml. from 20 litres of
mash.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On 8/10/2017 6:15 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Tim McNamara writes:

On Wed, 09 Aug 2017 22:39:36 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Many, perhaps most people who use opiods are addicts, which means that
they regularly use a drug just to feel normal.

Professionally I have been dealing with the opioid epidemic for damn
near 20 years. It only became a recent crisis when nice middle class
white folks started turning to heroin out in the suburbs. As long as
the primary victims were poor and/or non-white, nobody really gave much
of a crap at the policy level. Once it hit the likely voter pool, then
the narrative changed.

Sorry, a bit cynical these days.

Not wrong, but the proposed solution for those poor addicts would have
been even more stop and frisk, longer prison terms, &c. Probably just
as well not to have the publicity.

Saying that "most people who use opioids are addicts" is a gross
generalization and is simply not true. However, these are all highly
addictive drugs- from codeine to fentanyl and heroin, etc.- and starting
to use them at all carries a risk of addiction. It is simply the
biology of the drugs in the human body and few people are immune to the
potential. If you take a single first dose of oxycodone today, there is
a measurable risk that a year from now you will still be taking it (my
recollection is that the risk is about 6%). Take it for a week and the
risk is higher; take it for a month and the risk is higher; take if for
a year and the risk of addiction is higher still.

I was sloppy and imprecise. If you ask, out of all the individuals that
have taken at least one non-medical opioid dose in the past year, how
many are addicts, then you're certainly right in that most of them are
not. On the other hand, if you ask about the past *day*, then most of
them are. Equivalently, you could take the marketing perspective and
ask out of all the doses consumed how many are taken by addicts, and I
suspect that most of them are.

Opioids are IMHO more addictive than alcohol, perhaps a bit less
addictive than nicotine (BTW, to my observation over 36 years of working
in mental health, the "gateway drugs" are cigarettes, whatever's in
mommy and daddy's medicine cabinet and alcohol. Roughly in that order.
Usually by the time people get to trying marijuana, they are already on
the substance abuse train. That said, marijuana is *not* a benign,
no-harm drug even if less damaging than others) and maybe on par with
meth and cocaine (especially crack cocaine).

Really? Methamphetamine on a par with cannabis? I find that a little
hard to square both with what I have read and what I have seen.

They may sometimes want something out of the ordinary, and are surely
on the low end of substance risk-averse scale, but usually they want
their usual dose of their usual drug. With fentanyl and similar new
narcotics, though, they run the risk of unexpectedly getting something
much stronger than usual.

Getting fentanyl and other ultra-potent narcotics is usually by
accident. Their heroin is adulerated and they have no way of knowing or
controlling the dose. You are right, though, in that addicts become
less risk-averse as they deal with withdrawal symptoms. Astonishing to
me, I have read interviews with addicts who go towards areas where more
ODs are happening because they feel it indicates a better quality
product. Yikes! That is dumb as a box of rocks to me.

I suspect that most of them were less risk-averse when they started,
but it's "any port in a storm" when they start feeling sick.

One of my high school classmates read a book on mushrooms, and found
psilocybe cubensis listed as "toxic". So he sought out other toxic
mushrooms, figuring they might be magic too. No idea whether he's still
alive ...

Imagine drinking your next beer not know whether or not it would have
the effect of a big glass of vodka, then multiply by a few orders of
magnitude. This kind of random quality control would never be
permitted in a market with any kind of regulation.

Sure it is. You can buy a beer at the bar with 4% alcohol by volume or
14%. Can't tell by looking if it's on tap and with many craft beer
styles the alcohol burn is masked. Most places these days list the ABV
on the beer list to help prevent someone erroneously buying a pint that
is the equivalent of three beers (and then having three more before
driving home). There is little to no regulation about the strength of
beer in many places. There is a beer in Scotland repored in the news
that had something like 35% alcohol, produced because the brewer was
****ed off at the government about some regulation or other.

You can certainly ask, and the more potent brews are almost always
served in smaller glasses.

I doubt that much of it is deliberate, it's just that fentanyl is
effective in microgram doses, and drug dealers aren't good enough at
measuring. Cops are now (justifiably) worried about suffering
overdoses simply through skin exposure.

Cops, EMTs, etc., have indeed suffered ODs from very minimal skin
contact with substances or from breathing contaminated dust. Some of
these narcotics are incredibly potent and life-threatening to humans.
Narcan is standard equipment at all times nowadays.

One popular route for medical administration is the dermal patch. A
postage stamp sized thing that can send a person from groaning in pain
to completely lit up just by sticking it on the skin.


Guys boil those 'safe time release' patches in a spoon for
injection.

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

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.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 10 Aug 2017 22:55:01 -0400, 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.

My guess is that, given that cash was scarce on the western frontier
and transportation was primitive, converting a sizable amount of grain
into a smaller volume of whiskey that could be more easily be
transported to a location where it could be sold for cash may have
been an underlying cause of the Whiskey Rebellion.
--
Cheers,

John B.