Anyone ever made their own moonshine?

[Smoky Brisket]

I dont know if we can discuss actual recipes on here, but has anyone ever tried to make their own bath tub booze?

I know this is essentially what separates us from OU, but I like to look at it as trying to emulate the doctors on M*A*S*H.

 

[MaximumBarnes]

I've never made it but I've tasted it and it is nasty ****.

 

[CHIEFLAZYBOY]

I haven't made any yet, but I come from a long distinguished line of bootleggers, so I have the recipe. I found on the internet where you can build one out of a hot water heater, but I have been told by the elders that I MUST make it out of copper.
I'm not sure if I would drink it, bootleggers that made the best stuff around say it doesn't even compare to cheap whisky like Canadian Mist or Kentucky Tavern. I would like to make it just to say I did.

Chief

 

[Tex Pete]

It's not moonshine, but I had a friend telling me the other day how they made wine in a bathtub in Saudi Arabia while he was working as a contractor there last year.

Pretty humorous, the lengths people go to for booze in a dry place.

 

[Anastasis]

I've been wanting to order one of these for a while...

Solely, for the extraction of essential oils of course.

For anyone familiar with the process. Are there easy ways to check the purity, ie the methanol content, of your distillate...or do you just not worry about that?

 

[Driftwood]

Sure hope you aren't producing Methanol. That's wood alcohol and drinking it causes blindness or death. Talk about being "blind drunk!"

The good alcohol is ethanol, made from corn, grain, sugar, or others. Specific gravity indicators will tell you the alcohol content.

Bathtub booze is usually produced by getting some pure ethanol (200 proof) and diluting it with water and flavorings like orange juice, or juniper to make gin. Bathtub wine is crushing grapes, adding yeast, fermenting, filtering and drinking. The Egyptians made wine 4000 years ago. They generally disdain alcohol today but there is a fine lager beer brewed there and sold to tourists.....and others.

I had a boss who used to distill custom liquors like brandy, etc. He was investigated for having contractors provide him with free stills. I believe nothing came of it. Remember, the only free drinks are at your buddie's house and those aren't really free as you will learn when his truck breaks down 500 miles away or when he moves.

I had an uncle who brewed his own alcoholic root beer. The bottles would explode from time to time in his basement due to pressure build up. A cousin made his own wine in upstate New York. (What do these revelations say about my family?) His initial sparkling catawbas were awful. I drank his still wine at his daughter's wedding and it was quite tasty.

Don't drink the Sterno!!

 

[Anastasis]

In reply to:

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[Anastasis]

I googled it, and apparently there is a device called an alcoholmeter, similar to a hydrometer, that you can use to measure alcohol content of high alcohol content liquids. I guess I was thinking in the mindset of a homebrewer, not a moonshiner.

 

[brntorng]

I used to work with a dude from Tennessee. Whenever he made a trip home he always brought a jug of hooch back with him. Nasty stuff. I guess you have to be brought up on it.

 

[ImissWallyPryor]

My wife's stepfather comes from a long line of moonshiners (or so he claims). He even lives in the backwoods of Kentucky. He told me I could drink ethanol if I wanted to taste moonshine, but I warned him that they mix in just enough gasoline to make it lethal to drink.

 

[CelisHorn]

I met an old guy once who told me that while they were in the Navy, probably like 50 years ago, they'd drill a hole in a coconut, pour in yeast, cork the coconut and then put it in the engine room of a ship for several weeks. Made sweet coconut wine.

 

[ImissWallyPryor]

I might drink ethanol before I try Navy Boiler Room Coconut Wine.