I'm in eastern Tennessee for a few days. I stopped at a small local BBQ stand for lunch and got into a good conversation with the owner. Good guy.
One thing led to another and I wound up being sent to another guy, a friend of the BBQ guy, who sells moonshine. I traded $30 for one quart of clear 'shine made somewhere nobody would tell me.
I'm sipping it now. Cheese on a cracker, it's different. No ageing, no oak barrels, just clear liquid. Distilled corn mash cut with spring water. It tastes like, I don't know, a combination of tequila and wood chips and corn. It's a mild taste, though, and not bad. Different, but not bad. Kind of smooth. Kind of.
It's very potent. I'm sipping maybe one finger and I'm getting pretty damn knocked back. I feel a change in me brain.
I think I get it. Someone with a lot of skill took a risk and made this stuff somewhere out in the woods. Making it is a bug fuck you to the government said by some man who believes a free man can make what he damn well pleases without the government telling him he can't.
Good job, sir. Live free.
27 comments:
I had shine once. Never again. Never. Again.
Run!
Death's Door Distillery in Middleton, WI makes a product called White Whiskey. I saw it when I was back in Sonie two years ago. I originally thought it could be a novelty item for making clear, colorless whiskey drinks instead of whiskey-colored ones.
I wonder what the difference is between it and moonshine.
Probably no one ever got shot in Middleton for running whiskey, for a start.
Pollo, white whiskey is just young whiskey; it hasn't been barreled (which is where the color comes from) and aged yet.
Moonshine is simply homemade or illicit white whiskey, I believe.
Shine on, Haz!
Pollo, white whiskey is just young whiskey; it hasn't been barreled (which is where the color comes from) and aged yet.
The beaujolais of spirits
This may not have been a wise idea.
Unrelated, I hope someone posts a photo of a bloodhound on some blog. And I need overalls.
The Icelanders make a distilled product called Brennevin. I had a forgotten run-in with Brennevin over 30 years ago.
Brennevin and grappa are similar in my book.
My family were pretty big drinkers, but when I was a teenager we had a pint mason jar of moonshine that my Dad picked up somewhere. Even though it was often tasted by people, that thing sat around the house though my entire teenage years. Even my friends and I could never do more than taste it after numerous attempts to drink it. It was 180 proof and impossible to drink even when mixed. It eventually was used to start the barbecue. It excelled at this.
Moonshine is the best.
I just had some mixed with tea bags not too long ago.
It was 180 proof and impossible to drink even when mixed.
Distilled ethanol is about 180 proof.
Dooley
Well, the legend was it was 180 proof. I suspect the other 10% was benzene or acetone or sulphuric acid.
@Bago, the other 5% just h20
$30 a quart? Must be for the tourist trade.
Live free and die. In the glory days of moonshining, every attempt was made to minimize the casualties, but not every vat was up to snuff......Maybe it's like eating Japanese blowfish. The risk is part of the allure. I can live with tuna fish and Jack Daniels--and the green label is fine with me.
Morning follow-up:
Mistake. My head feels like it's been held in a giant wood clamp overnight. My tongue feels like sandpaper. My innards feel like they are going to become outtards.
Time to break out the emergency megadose of vitamin B complex.
Some of us learn that lesson young, some when they are old.
Some never learn it.
Welcome to the south!
Re-hydrate, young man.
If you drink half and then fill it will fresh Door County cherries, it will be really really good in about six months after you do so.
The Good News: It can't be too bad MH, you didn't go blind.
There's a white whiskey made in Kansas called, "Kansas." They aren't very imaginative. I don't like the taste.
As a teenager, I worked in a service station—Pure Oil. My boss sometimes got paid by credit customers in whiskey, both white and barrel aged. One week, I talked him into paying me in whiskey. He paid me a gallon of white and a quart of aged. I drank the aged. The white was almost impossible to drink. I ended up using in my lawn mower. However, it would choke out on high weeds.
BTW, I grew up around people who ran shine. I went on one run with a high school friend, from rural Tuscaloosa Co. to Birmingham. The movie 'Thunder Road' was pretty close to a documentary.
Haz, be careful and don't move around much while imbibing that stuff, much less drive 2 or 4 wheeled vehicles.
Ahh ... scrolling down I see you learned something. Ouch.
Ken in SC -- you seem like such a mild mannered middle of the road guy -- aren't you a school teacher? Write a short story about it and get it published. The US Airways or Delta rag would use it in one of their southern feature editions.
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