July 10, 2019 • 43 mins
Many governments restrict alcohol distillation for safety/tax reasons, but Appalachian moonshiners are undeterred – and that’s putting it mildly. Anney and Lauren explore the history and science of moonshine, plus what bears that label in stores today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor, a protection of I heardio
and stuff media. I'm Ann and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
today we're talking about moonshine, not my Little Phony, which
I don't know for sure it's my Little Pony, but
I feel that it must be. Okay, well, I'm unfamiliar
with it if it is. But uh no, we talk
(00:28):
about very few of My Little Ponies. We didn't talk
about them sometimes as most as all food shows do.
I have to imagine there are a lot of food
themed my Little Ponies. Okay, yes for sure. No, we
are not just talking about My Little Ponies. We are
(00:48):
talking about the alcohol versions. Yes, yes, different from My
Little Ponies. We're we're going to be focusing perhaps largely
today on American moonshine. It's pretty wide category. But um,
but we'll get into that in a minute. Um. In
the meanwhile, I don't think that I've ever had honest
(01:10):
to goodness home produced moonshine. Oh really, No, I've had
the stuff that they sell that's labeled moonshine. That's just
white whiskey. Right. But yeah, I I grew up in
moonshine country, and uh I have certainly had some, and
(01:30):
those who follow me on Twitter no that I had
a recent, very random experience with moonshine. I went home
for Mother's Day. My mom, out of the blue said
I know where to get a burrito. It's moonshine. And
I said, it's your mother's day, so if this is
the day you want to have, let's go. Let's go
for it. And uh, it was a glorious, spontaneous, strange afternoon. Uh.
(01:57):
Former NASS employee with a bone from a coon penis
in his hat told us all about moonshine and it's
made and I got a bottle of it, and um,
I was going to bring some to our dn D session,
but then we didn't have it, so now it's gone
because I think, um, it was a neutral, like there
were six different kinds you could get and this one
(02:19):
was pretty neutral, okay. Um, And it's placed in a
NASCAR museum by the way, this oon Shine Distillery. And
if you are confused by that, like I was, you
are going to learn a lot of interesting stuff about
NASCAR in this episode. Yes, unexpected Nascar tangents, or I
mean perhaps expected. I don't know how much you know
(02:40):
about moonshine yell or or a Nascar true true. Yes,
they're both pretty tight. Actually, um and one of my
favorite how stuff works stories ever, unrelated to Nascar unrelated
UM is a couple of years ago. I was filming
a movie during the month of August, so I would
work like fourteen hours of daylight and then I would
(03:01):
come and do my house to work's job at night,
and um, I never slept, if you're wondering, and I
on like the third day I was filming, we did this.
It was a horror movie, so I got covered in
fake It wasn't blood, it was like it was goop
and it was made of Hershey's syrup. And we did
(03:21):
it like the first thing in the day, so it
like set, you know, and I didn't have time to
watch it off before I went to work. Are then
very fancy how stuff works office in Buckhead. I figured
at nine pm, no one will be there. I think
it was a Tuesday. Wrong, very wrong to have my
producer was. They were not only still there, but they
(03:42):
were drinking moonshine out of jars that a fan had
sent Josh and Chuck over stuff. You should know, orange
flavored move shine. If that fan happens to be listening.
We didn't drink it, and so I walked in fro
was covered in this fake what looked like blood but
it wasn't. And they said not a word, but offered
me some moonshine, and I took it silently and got
(04:05):
to work well. And also the lights were off. That's
none of this is actually surprising to me. I hope
that that gives you. I hope that my complete lack
of surprise gives you all a little bit of a
peek behind the curtain of what it certainly has been
like working for this company. I will say this was
(04:25):
very early in my career here for me, So I
was like, I see yeah, I see No, I mean
we're we like sharing a drink. We do, and we're
not easily freaked out. Both true, both true. But okay, well,
let's get to a question. Yes, moonshine, what is it? Well,
(04:55):
moonshine is a catch all word for distilled alcohol made
by home producers. Confusingly, though, the term is now also
applied to unaged or or white whiskey manufactured by commercial
producers who are doing it legally in the United States. Anyway,
it does get a little confusing, it does. Um. White
whiskey is simply whiskey, being a category of alcohol, is
(05:19):
made from a mash of some type of grain um
that has not been aged in barrels and thus has
not picked up any of the flavors or colors that
come from that aging process. The aging process can also
filter out some undesirable flavors and can allow some harsher
compounds to evaporate out. Therefore, white whiskeys tend to be
very sharp in flavor compared with aged whiskeys. Yes, most
(05:43):
moonshine made by home producers in the United States at
any rate is indeed white whiskey, and the most common
grain type used is apparently corn um, although producers probably
use what's available and won't attract too much attention because
home distillery is super illegal in the United States. Oh yeah, Um,
I've heard of fruit and even granulated sugar being the
(06:04):
main ingredients. Um. Those technically would produce brandies and RUMs,
but you know who's counting. Like with any distilled alcohol,
moonshine is going to start out by you mixing water
and your main ingredients of corn, wheat, barley, fruit, whatever,
um and heating them to make their starches break down
and their sugars become more available, which you want to
(06:25):
do because you then either let wild yeast grow in
it or you add yeast, which which will eat those
sugars and poop alcohol and flavor fermentation used poop. When
you distill alcohol, UH, what you're doing is heating that
fermented liquid to the point where the booze that you
(06:45):
want evaporates, but but the stuff that you don't want,
which is everything else, really does not. UM. You then
collect the boozy vapor and cool it until it condenses
into liquid again. And this is fairly easy to do
because alcohol compounds hit their boiling point at much low
temperatures than water does. So like if you bring a
still up to about seventy eight degrees celsius a hundred
and seventy two fahrenheit UM, the steam coming off of
(07:08):
it will be mostly alcohols. But not all alcohols are
created equal, no UH. Distillers talk about their products having
three parts during the process, the heads, the tails, and
the hearts. The heads are what come off of the
still first UM as it's heating up, and these are
compounds that hit their boiling point below that seventy eight celsius,
(07:29):
including a lot of stuff that you don't want to
consume because it is poison, like acetone and a seatles
tull to hide. I think we're gonna go with that.
It's like take five, y'all anyway, UM, and also methanol.
The tails are what come off way towards the end,
alcohols with higher boiling points, plus some like oils and
(07:52):
other stuff like glycerin, which you also generally don't want
to consume, but more because they taste weird than because
they're dangerous. The heart, meanwhile, is what evaporates through the
still in the middle of the process, lots of ethyl alcohol,
which is what you do want. UM. Knowing how to
tell the difference among the three and thus collecting mostly
(08:12):
hearts is key to creating a tasty and safe product,
and running the hearts through the still a second or
third time can help you get more of what you
wanted less of what you don't. M a moonshine maybe
even sharper still than than unaged alcohols that are commercially produced.
Because distillation is such an involved chemistry UM, and some
(08:34):
producers might cut corners by like not doing those extra
runs or not using filters or possibly adding extra stuff
to the mash to attempt to speed fermentation or otherwise
game the system somehow. Um or they might make it
perfectly but just leave it very high proof, like up
to around a hundred and fifty proof, which is way
higher than most of us are used to. Your your
average commercial whiskey or vodka or whatever is down around
(08:55):
like eight proof. So yeah, I looked this up when
I got my bottle of moonshine because I just want
to be clear, like what you were in for gin,
but how much alcohol is in there? And I think
it was double specific it was it was more, Yes,
it was more more than more than usual. Um yeah,
(09:16):
So so okay. So generally, when you're talking about moonshine,
you're talking about something that will be kind of lightly sweet,
maybe have some kind of flavor based on some specific
flavor based on whatever went into it, some of that
kind of corn or something like that. Um, but then
a but then a pretty pretty serious biter burn, the
kind of thing that makes you go, who Yes, I
(09:38):
think I think I did that the last time that
I had a white whiskey with you and Dylan when
we were in uh Kentucky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that
was good. Oh that was a thing I like, I
stepped away from the bar, I would I was like, waw,
all right, that's happening. Um. But yes, but moonshine, if
a moonshiner knows what they're doing, it's not dangerous. Um.
(10:00):
But you know that is a trustful because it's not
regulated because it's illegal. Yes, yes, anyway, we'll talk about
that more in a second, will Um. But now nutrition
drink responsibly. Yeah. An ounce of a hundred proof white
(10:20):
whiskey has about eighty to ninety calories. It's it's alcohol.
Drink responsibly, very much. Drink responsibly. Yes, and yeah, a
bad batch of moonshine can indeed make you go blind. Um,
sometimes due to the addition of lie to speed deformentation.
This is more in the past thing. But you know,
um or even kill you. And some producers cry foul,
(10:41):
claiming this is a rumor started and spread by legal
producers to shut down the less than legal stuff or
maybe the government. I don't know, they had they had
a huge campaign against it, right Oh yes, oh yes
they did. Um. I would say moonshine is like a
big middle finger to the government United States. It is
who buddy it is. We are going to get into
(11:02):
that in the history some but but but but one
one quick factory to they got Louis Armstrong involved in it.
Didn't think they did at the invest Yeah, the government
requested it, um, and he recorded several ads about the
potential dangers of consuming moonshine, and it was this was
just one part of the poison moonshine plublicity program. Oh,
(11:22):
this is a whole okay, alright, so in this is
sort of like a prohibition side note more than a
moonshine side note. But since we're talking about it, all right,
it is completely true that methanol can cause blindness and
respiratory paralysis, which can lead to death. UM. So if
a moonshiner isn't paying attention and leaves methanol in their hooch,
that's bad times. UM. Methanol boils off first during the
(11:46):
heads phase and is sometimes specified as a whole fourth
category during distillation, the four shots it's called. However, I
am not sure about the veracity of the lie thing
past or or present. Um, And for sure, a lot
of the deaths from poisonous booze during prohibition were due
to the government requiring industrial producers of alcohol to deliberately
(12:09):
poison their product so that any moonshiner who was attempting
to use that industrial alcohol redistill it into moonshine would
poison their customers and possibly themselves. Wow. Um. Some estimates
put the death toll from this program above ten citizens. Um.
It is a fascinating and terrific story for another day. Um,
(12:31):
if you'd like to read about it. Slate has a
great article on the subject called The Chemist's War. And yeah,
so so I know, you know it's it's it's not
in a moonshiner's interest to poison their customer base. Sure
I do. Back in like when we did our Gin episode. Um,
I don't know. They weren't like trying to do it,
(12:53):
fir saure. They were just kind of experimenting, trying to
trying to stretch, trying to make a profit, trying to
get stuff out quicker. Yeah, sure it happens. You know
sometimes I guess according to that Gin tour Um, you're
really good numbers. Yeah, it's legal. It's really hard to
(13:15):
track down numbers on that, very difficult. And this brings
us to your question is moonshine like legal? Um, the
official Oxford English Dictionary definition is moonshine is whiskey or
other strong alcoholic drinks made and sold illegally. But you
might be thinking, I've definitely seen something called been trying
at the store apple pie flavored. Yeah, it just comes
(13:38):
down to that lack of federal requirements in place around
defining what can be called moonshine, right, yeah, and um,
there aren't the same guidelines that are in place around
something like bourbon, which we've talked about. Yeah. Absolutely, Um. Yeah, Also,
in some other countries you can totally distill booze at home,
So if you categorize any home to old boozes moonshine,
(14:01):
then moonshine can be legal. Depending on where I live.
I definitely thought it was legal. But alright, Georgia, something
about me. Um, Distilling alcohol at home is legal in
US because it's easy to make a mistake resulting in
a dangerous product, and that's typically the whole mystique of
moonshine here. Yeah, she's dangerous. It's legal and distilled by
(14:24):
someone deep and but moonshiner is making product illegally are
more likely to be charged with tax evasion and money laundering,
and that could mean up to fifteen years in prison. Yeah.
The thing is that the Feds can only get you
for five years in prison, up to five years for
making moonshine, but they can get you for up to
fifteen for tax evasion. Goodness, so they want those taxes.
(14:48):
I mean, this whole thing kind of boils down to that.
It does. Yes, um an important distinction. Moonshiners are people
that are making the stuff and bootleggers are the ones
that smuggle it. The word bootleger refers to a practice
dating back to the eighteen eighties of smuggling flask in
your boots. Yeah, big high boots. Yes, they're very useful.
(15:09):
Once automobiles came on the scene, the term evolved to
mean anyone smuggling liquor. In the myth a legend of
moonshine is really impressive, especially here in the South. Although
I mean, did you have like a moonshine zero? Yeah,
no Ohio and neither Ohio North South Florida are are
(15:30):
part of the whole like moonshine trail and not is
yeah or I mean not not not to my personal
knowledge at any rate, I'm sure that that that like
Cleveland during Prohibition was bumping with some moonshine, but um,
but yeah not not. By the time I got there,
things have changed. Also, I was seven, so yeah, you're
like tuned into the moonshine gossips. Okay. When I was
(15:56):
growing up in small town Georgia, um, there were so
many rumors about where you could get moonshine, who was
making it, and secret sellers in the woods. And I
know for sure one of them was factor um and
it was really mythic um. I wish I could go
into more. I don't want to get anyone in trouble. Yeah,
(16:16):
but it has a reputation and it has a lot
of nicknames as well. Goodness, yes, who white lightning, rot gut,
mountain dew and used to come with a mountain dew.
It'll tickle your inherts, tickle your innerts, I agree, skull pop,
panther's breath or panther's piss or just shine um. And yeah, yeah,
(16:41):
it was a big defiance to the to the U. S. Government.
It is it is um or certainly not yes, has
been and still is. Yeah, I do know, I do know,
at least two people who have family members who have
or still do make moonshine. I've been told, I've been
(17:03):
told of their stills. Yeah, it's it is, it's a
whole thing's it's it's kind of part of that wonderful
Southern Gothic like storytelling kind of tradition of of just
you know, like like like this is what we're up to,
like let me let me paint you a story kind
of thing. Yes, yes, um, and and one of those
(17:24):
stories that you might hear. And I find it fascinating
that we see this reflected in so much science fiction. Um,
is that you can use moonshine or whatever sci fi
equivalent as fuel? Oh sure, Um. Some of it was,
and I'm sure still is distilled in car gradiators, which
(17:44):
was not safe. No, imagine, No, no, you don't want
to know. You generally want to do distillation in copper
because copper is one of the things that doesn't leach
bad stuff into your alcohol, as opposed to something like
a lead pipe, which does. Yes, you don't want that. No, no, no,
not at all. But this about brings us to some
(18:08):
fascinating history. Yes, but first it brings us to a
quick break for a word from our sponsor and we're back.
Thank you sponsoring. Okay, so this is some really fascinating stuff.
(18:30):
I'm really excited. Um. The first use of moonshine, the
English word goes back to the fifteen century, literally meaning
shine of the moon and figuratively quote appearance without substance, pretense,
or fiction. And the first time it was used to
refer to liquor. That didn't occur until the eighteenth century England,
(18:50):
and it's specifically referred to illegal or smuggled alcohol. That's
why the name, because smugglers used the cover of night
to smuggle their goods, which didn't necessary have to be moonshine. Yes,
but but um, Smuggling alcohol was common in Europe at
the time, and smugglers had only the shine of the
moon to guide their pass. Moonlight was sometimes used in
(19:12):
the same sense as moonshine was until the nineteenth century. Yeah,
and for a while there any job or activity that
was done late at night might be called moonshining or moonlighting.
But eventually moonshine came to really basically mean booze and
booze related activities, and moonlighting came to mean that other
thing that moonlighting means I totally forgot about moonlighting. Yeah,
(19:36):
that's true. I remember because it was a company stipulation
that you couldn't moonlight, and I had to get a
thing that said I could when I was doing that movie. Anyway,
there's actually a folk tale from the time about a
group of smugglers caught in the act of raking the pond.
The pond a pond for barrels of smuggled French brandy. Um.
(19:59):
Then they were caught by some tax collectors in the
middle of the act, yes, and thinking on their feet,
the smugglers pretended to be a group of confused, drunk
people trying to rake in the moon's reflection or, in
their drunken parlance, cheese. Yeah. Yeah. They were like, nah, dude,
we're not there's no certainly no barrels of brandy in there.
(20:21):
We're just trying to get the sweet cheese out of
this pond. Are so drunk? Yeah, This bulletproof ploy obviously worked,
and the dat collectors labeled the smugglers as moon rakers
and went about their married way. I'm sure laughing about
all those silly drunk people. And moonshine was oftent typically
made at night in hopes no one would see the
(20:42):
smoke from the stoves. It got its start in America
in grain producing states like Pennsylvania. Yeah, immigrants from England
and Scotland and Ireland who settled in Appalachia brought their
whiskey recipes with them and adopted them for whatever grains
were they were growing around here. And instead of letting
excess grain go to waste, producers distilled it. Not only
(21:04):
could you drink or maybe sell this stuff, but in
some places it was an accepted currency. It could be
the difference between surviving and not. Oh yeah, it was
a big economic um. Uh, maybe not staple, but but
side game. It was so in when the U. S governments,
you know, seeing all of this, implemented the whiskey tax
(21:25):
in an effort to pay off the cost of the
Revolutionary War. Uh, people were were happy about it. No. No,
Also thanks to this for letting me once again look
up the Alexander Hamilton sound jack, because they say, and
they're Jefferson is doing like a there's a cabin map
and he says, when Brittain tax ort, we got frisky.
(21:46):
Imagine what's going to happen if you've go to tax
on whiskey, and it was true. I mean, it's what
it was right after the Revolutionary War. And some people's
you know, like like mentality about it was like we
just we just went to war about taxa without representation.
Why why why are you gonna taxes for this now? Yeah,
And it was a big shift from it was basically
(22:09):
States rice versus a federal bank. And so we were
still fingering out in a lot of stuff. You're a
new country, um, and yeah, we talked about this sum
in our our Bourbon Whiskey episode. So yeah, people didn't
like it. Distillers resorted to all sorts of things to
evade this tax. The point the U. S. Marshal descended
(22:29):
upon Pennsylvania coming to collect, and his presence was not welcomed.
Five hundred men attacked the home of the local tax
inspector general and during the skirmish, the group's leader was killed,
which escalated into a protest made up of over six
thousand people. President George Washington sent thirteen thousand troops to
(22:52):
deal with the situation. Who yes, all of this was
part of the Whiskey Rebellion. In eighteen o one, the U. S.
Government repealed the whiskey tax um, and this was one
of our new country's first test Yeah, the Whiskey Rebellion.
We're serious about it or um. And before and after this, though,
(23:16):
moonshining really took off in the South. Tales were told
about gunfights between collectors trying to get excise taxes from
moonshiners in the eighteen sixties. These skirmishes increased as the
revenuers came around trying to collect excise taxes for the
Civil War. Yeah, during and after the Civil War, times
were particularly hard for a lot of Americans, and there
(23:37):
was again a lot of resentment from people who were
scraping to make a living off of things like moonshine
towards these taxes, and moonshiners came together with the Ku
Klux Klan as this conflict against the tax collectors and crew,
and several battles ensued. As desperation went up, moonshiners became
(23:58):
more ruthless and violent in their tactics, attacking I R
S members and their families and anyone who they believed
may give away the location of us. Still, and this
did not endear moonshiners to their communities and the public.
Opinions started to shift towards the negative end when it
came to moonshiners. At the same time, temperance is getting
(24:21):
more and more public support in the Georgia Mountains. In
eighteen seventy six, four fifths of the court cases in
federal law enforcement focus was on illegal outool. Yeah. Um,
I wanted to mention too. Wasn't just a man's world? No.
Take Nancy the moonshiner. Um. She was in New Jersey
(24:44):
in eighteen eighties. Her neighbors largely regarded her as eccentric,
and I can see why because under the cover of
night she would steal apples and use those apples to
make what she called Jersey lightning or apple check. Okay, yes,
that is a Milo pony. By the way, a detective
(25:05):
on her case snuck onto her property, but Nancy knocked
him out and to skate Nancy. We can't output root
for them. Oh no. Um. Then there was Moonshine Mary,
a Polish immigrant out of Illinois who made moonshine and
sold shots of it out of her home for fifteen cents.
But she went on to become the first woman in
(25:27):
that state to be convicted for selling poison liquor, and
as we've discussed before, women were also involved in the
transporting of illegal alcohol. Um there's Willie Carter Sharp who
gave testimony to the moonshine conspiracy trial with diamond studied teeth,
(25:49):
diamond studied teeth that you know nothing but respect. I
couldn't pull it off. That is about as America as
you get. I think you're at a moonshine trial. You've
been arrested twelve times what she was, and you show
up with time and studed teeth. Yeah, yeah you do.
(26:12):
You're right, You're right. But here we come to the
nineteen twenties and prohibition for moonshine. This was the best
thing that could have happened. Now that you couldn't buy
alcohol bi legal means more people were seeking out illegal
sources for their booze, and moonshine had been rocking that
for for a while already. UM demand was so great,
(26:35):
moonshiner's resorted to water down alcohol and sugar based moonshine
as opposed to crane based speak easies with passwords and
secret ways to escape in case the authorities ever showed up,
and organized crime around the smuggling and sale of alcohol flourish. Yeah,
in hot spots like in one Franklin County, Virginia. It's
(26:56):
been estimated that of the residents were involved in the
moonshine trade ring this time, and so that's a lot
of kids as well, you know. Yeah, okay, okay. During
the nineteen thirties, moonshiners from Dawson County, which is the
big city from where I grew up in our high
school rival they transported melons of gallons of moonshine to Atlanta,
(27:22):
and my very own home county of Lumpkin was big
in the moonshine scene in the thirties and forties as well.
And also distillers sometimes use the bone from a raccoons penis. Yes,
they do have bones, they do in the distilling process.
The man in Dawsonville gave me the history lesson, like
I said, he had one in his hat. Uh and yes,
(27:42):
like I said, he had previously worked for NASA's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah,
I think the I think the penis bone is is
used to help control the flow of the spirit from
the condensing hose into the collection vessel, like at the
end of the process. I think that's yeah, that's he
showed us how to use what it was used for.
(28:03):
I don't know, but yeah, I think that was that
was it. It It was the right size for the spout, right, yeah. Yeah.
And it's kind of got this little like s curve
shape so so, and sort of a little groove in
it where the urethra goes. So I read a surprising
amount about raccoon penises during research for this episode. Never
know I was gonna go. I was like, well, there
(28:26):
you are. This is your life, your profession. I sometimes
I sometimes hope that like some government official has to
look at my search, my searches someday to just go like, oh,
dear what, Oh I don't even know me too. I
like to imagine there's one person assigned to you and
you're just making their life super interesting and disturbed. Well
(28:52):
you're welcome, So back to moonshine. Right. Anyway, business was
booming until prohibition was repealed in nineteen thirty three. Then
sales flattened, and that that didn't mean it went away
much the annoyance of the federal government who tried to
wrangle this moonshine situation into the seventies without these laws
(29:16):
prohibiting alcohol, although there are still dry counties, and they're
obviously were back then. Um, going to the trouble seeking
out moonshine for the average person just wasn't worth it.
In order to transport as much moonshine as possible, mechanics
would fine tune their cars, upgrading the engine and adding
in secret compartments for the product. Um shocks and springs
(29:39):
were installed to protect the booze, and I read accounts
of oil slicks smoke springs. These were called tanker cars,
and we're frequently unassuming nineteen forties forwards, and I think
I read this whole thing about Henry Ford being like
a teetotaler, being so offended about Yes, that's fun. And
(30:03):
drivers who were also called runners are trippers had to
have some real driving know how, some sweet moves, as
they say, to evade the authorities. They also had to
know all the mountain back roads well enough to drive
them in the dark without headlights. One of their moves
was called the bootleg turn, a quick turnaround into a
(30:23):
controlled skid. In their spare time, these drivers would work
on their skills by racing against each other, sometimes at fairgrounds,
sometimes for pay, sometimes with thousands of spectators. So okay.
Once prohibition went away and World War Two ended, there
was this group of skilled drivers who had suped up
(30:44):
cars and enjoyed racing each other, who saw that people
would pay to watch them race, and they were in
the market for a new job. So in this gave
birth to NASCAR. Supposedly, the winner of the very first
race used the same car to make a run like
(31:04):
a week previous. Oh my goodness, I love it. I
do too. I had no idea about this. And we
rolled up at that distillery and there's all this NASCAR memorabilia.
This is interesting, But for real, Moonshine and NASCAR are
and we're tight. Raymond Parks. Moonshiner was the first to
(31:25):
bring together a formal official racing team. He had a
lot of money, most of it from illegal bootlegging, perhaps
particularly in our home base of Atlanta. Two of his
cousins were Roy Hall and Lloyd the Lightning. I think
it's c A. I I'm not if. If it's not,
(31:46):
then I have to apologize to to a mutual friend
of ours for how I've been pronouncing his name. Oh dear,
oh dear, I I like I was telling Lauren. I
tried to look this up beforehand, and I found a
lot of great videos about the Moonshine Festival in Dawsonville,
but I did not find any pronunciation. Anyway, we did,
(32:07):
we knew these were two of the best trippers. Um
Lloyd was the winner of the first big stock car
race in on Atlanta's Lakewood Speedway when start car racing
resumed post World War Two. Police band five racers Hall
included for hauling illegal alcohol and it almost led to
(32:27):
a riot. Thirty thousand people chanted Hall's name. Yes, he
had sixteen arrest and his driver's license had been rebound,
but police gave into the pressure and allowed the bootleggers
to race. Yep. Okay, And as I learned on my
moonshine adventure, I guess I wasn't hip to this. But
(32:52):
we have a saying, well, they have a saying in Dawsonville.
Awesome Bille from Dawsonville and his son Chase from the
same place. I love it from a safe place, Dawsonville. Yep.
Dawsonville has a mountain Moonshine festival every year. And if
you do the beautiful Amicalola hike, which my recommendation is
(33:13):
do it in the fall, do it early, it will
be packed, and then go to burps. Far back after
Um you can see the remains of a bootlegger truck
from the nineteen forties that slid off the road and
plummeted two hundred feet and when it was discovered in
the nineteen seventies, several jars of moonshine were found in
Oh Wow. One of the people who most exemplified Moonshine's
(33:36):
connection to NASCAR was Junior Johnson, and Johnson won pretty
big early on in his NASCAR career, but he went
to jail soon after for eleven months for moonshining, and
when he got back, he went right back to moonshining
and right back to racing. In six he received a
pardon for his moonshining from President Reagan, a pardon from
(33:59):
room shining Um. But people still got in all kinds
of trouble for moonshining UM. In nine, at least one
arrest was made after authorities found a still buried underneath
a fake cemetery in the aforementioned Franklin County, Virginia. UM.
The moonshiners had like erected fake tombstone and laid down
(34:21):
artificial flowers on the grays because you could like just
see it from the road. Um, there's this. There's this
article in a local paper about it, and it quoted
a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent one Jim
Hunt as saying, yes, sir, that was a good one.
It was something I'll tell you that I concur oh
(34:44):
fake with flowers. Wow Ah. Nowadays there are some distilleries
making white whiskey legally and selling it as moonshine. The
first instance of this that I could find was a
UM this craft white whiskey distillery out of Virginia in
the late eighties called Belmont Farm Distillery UM, run by
(35:06):
the grandson of a moonshiner. Production started really increasing during
the recent recession, when some states began loosening regulations around
distilling UM, leading to more craft distillers opening up shop,
including in areas where moonshine had always been made UM,
like eastern Tennessee, which is where popular company Whole Smoky
popped up. In UM, sales of legal products labeled moonshine
(35:30):
UM really picked up in the twenty teens. They increased
a thousand percent between Yeah, UM Yeah. Old Smokey distributes
through like Walmart and Sam's Club. Another company, Palmetto out
of South Carolina, distributes to the UK and South Africa,
and uh Big companies like Jack Daniels and Jim Beam
have both released white Whiskeyes of their own. Wow. Yeah,
(35:53):
I think it because I have noticed I see it
more on menus lately, and I think it is something
like you see it shine. Yeah, there's it is. It
is popular among millennials UM in the Discovery series Moonshiner's
debuted UM, which if you have not seen it's a
(36:15):
it's dramatic nonfiction, meaning it portrays what illegal distilling was
and is like without actually doing anything illegal docu drama.
UM portions of it are from actual documentaries UM, including
parts about a famous or or infamous modern moonshiner by
the name of Marvin or Popcorn Sutton, who was so
(36:37):
dedicated to the FU government part of moonshining that tragically
in two thousand nine, at the age of sixty four,
he took his own life rather than serving a term
in prison. His tombstone reads Popcorn said, Q you oh,
I I love this guy. It sounds like something i'd
(37:04):
hear in a nightmare. Oh yeah, yeah that that his
name being Popcorn just touched you, didn't it did? Well.
I hope that this doesn't disturb your sleep well you know. Yeah,
but the job, I guess it is. I guess it is.
(37:25):
And yeah, yeah, the Discovery show Moonshiners is still going.
It's just aired its eighth season again. It's just got
this whole first mythology. Yeah. When I when I went
to it the distillery, I immediately when I out there,
I thought, why We've got to do an episode on this,
(37:47):
because this is so I hadn't been considered. Yeah, just
how much there is kind of wrapped it's wrapped up
in all this like secrecy. Yeah. And the Whiskey rebellion
is so well, I mean horrifying, great and yeah, fascinating stuff.
The whole poison moonshine campaign was so weird. Ah yeah, yeah,
(38:11):
it's it's just it's still strange to me that it's illegal,
but like like widely accepted to be a thing that
people do. Yeah, partially specifically because they're like ha ha
tax evasion. Yeah yeah, yeah, America, goodness, a bunch of
(38:35):
tax invators. We are, we are dedicated to our tax
evasion and too slightly dangerous pursuits. It's got to be
some risk of blowing up involved, right right, yeah, what
are you even doing there? Is um uh. And during
my research I found a great article on gizmoto that
(38:58):
that talks a little bit of out the science of
moonshine and how to make it. And the author starts
it off by saying, oh my god, people die from this.
People burn their houses down, people explode themselves, people poison themselves.
Learn from this article. Use it to inform your upcoming
sci fi novel about space speakeasies during space prohibition. It'll happen,
but don't actually do this. I was like, well, yeah, yeah,
(39:26):
I don't think we could have said it better than that.
Just wrap, wraps it up, just neat little bow right
on topshine episode. We do have a little bit more
for you, but but first we've got one more quick
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(39:49):
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, and we're back with listen.
It was like a moon wave and then the ripples
of the thing dropping. I go too complicated. Sometimes I
(40:11):
wasn't following it, but I liked it. Oh thank you. Yeah, Yeah,
you're welcome. Anytime trying to paint a picture, it doesn't
always succeed. Caden wrote, I'm a big fan and I
just listened to your airline food episode and I loved it.
Thank you. You mentioned different options for picking food, and
I wanted to share my experience. I go to South
(40:32):
Africa to see my extended family a lot, and we
fly Emirates with a layover in Dubai. Brutal flight last year,
my dad picked me out of kid's meal for me
and I kid you not. They served candy and cake
for breakfast. Okay, I'm done. I am as well. I
didn't know this was a thing the kid options. Oh
it's just candy and cake on it. When you're in
(40:54):
a metal tube hurtling through the sky and your parents
can't do anything with you, what kind of monsters? I
don't know, but I'm gonna get it another kids are
gonna see it and they're gonna get mad. Yeah. Oh
that's great. Just a rebel rouser in my own way. Yeah.
Chavon wrote, you mentioned in the episode that raw rubarb
(41:16):
is usually far too tart to eat. Raw. We used
to grow rhubarb in the garden of my childhood home,
and once a year, when it was just ripe, I
was allowed by my mom to have one stick of
rubarb to eat, with a small bowl of sugar to
dip it in before each bite. I would usually manage
to get sticky red stains everywhere, stained fingers, stained t shirts,
stained shorts. I loved it so much, and I would
definitely recommend trying it the next time you buy it fresh.
(41:38):
It's delicious, if a little messy. I'm not sure if
maybe it's just a UK thing, but I think it's
pretty common here and not just my family. I haven't
had rubarb in so many years, and your episode made
me very nostalgic. I want to check all the grocery
stores in my town tomorrow to see if any of
them have any late crop that I can dip in
sugar like I did when I was little. And a listener,
Heather from Minnesota root in about this as well and
(42:00):
said it's fairly common in her area, so maybe where
rubarb is a thing like not so hard to find? Sure? Yeah, yeah,
I never we never ate a row when I was
growing up. But that sounds sticky and amazing and delicious.
Yeah yeah, I um I did a massive answering of
all the emails today and so as I um put
(42:24):
these in, a lot of people wrote in about Ruebarb.
So I'm glad that Hey, no, no, but I used
to do this with strawberries. But you're already pretty sweet.
But I loved it. It's simple. Yeah, the texture of
the sugar gets a little bit of a crunch and
it gets a little litle clumpy. Yeah. Anyway, thanks to
(42:48):
all three of them for writing. If you would like
to write to us, we would love to hear from you.
Our email is hello at saborpod dot com. We're also
on social media. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter. All three we are at savor Pod. We
do hope to hear from you. Savior is a production
of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart
(43:09):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thank you, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thank you to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor, a protection of I heardio
and stuff media. I'm Ann and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
today we're talking about moonshine, not my Little Phony, which
I don't know for sure it's my Little Pony, but
I feel that it must be. Okay, well, I'm unfamiliar
with it if it is. But uh no, we talk
(00:28):
about very few of My Little Ponies. We didn't talk
about them sometimes as most as all food shows do.
I have to imagine there are a lot of food
themed my Little Ponies. Okay, yes for sure. No, we
are not just talking about My Little Ponies. We are
(00:48):
talking about the alcohol versions. Yes, yes, different from My
Little Ponies. We're we're going to be focusing perhaps largely
today on American moonshine. It's pretty wide category. But um,
but we'll get into that in a minute. Um. In
the meanwhile, I don't think that I've ever had honest
(01:10):
to goodness home produced moonshine. Oh really, No, I've had
the stuff that they sell that's labeled moonshine. That's just
white whiskey. Right. But yeah, I I grew up in
moonshine country, and uh I have certainly had some, and
(01:30):
those who follow me on Twitter no that I had
a recent, very random experience with moonshine. I went home
for Mother's Day. My mom, out of the blue said
I know where to get a burrito. It's moonshine. And
I said, it's your mother's day, so if this is
the day you want to have, let's go. Let's go
for it. And uh, it was a glorious, spontaneous, strange afternoon. Uh.
(01:57):
Former NASS employee with a bone from a coon penis
in his hat told us all about moonshine and it's
made and I got a bottle of it, and um,
I was going to bring some to our dn D session,
but then we didn't have it, so now it's gone
because I think, um, it was a neutral, like there
were six different kinds you could get and this one
(02:19):
was pretty neutral, okay. Um, And it's placed in a
NASCAR museum by the way, this oon Shine Distillery. And
if you are confused by that, like I was, you
are going to learn a lot of interesting stuff about
NASCAR in this episode. Yes, unexpected Nascar tangents, or I
mean perhaps expected. I don't know how much you know
(02:40):
about moonshine yell or or a Nascar true true. Yes,
they're both pretty tight. Actually, um and one of my
favorite how stuff works stories ever, unrelated to Nascar unrelated
UM is a couple of years ago. I was filming
a movie during the month of August, so I would
work like fourteen hours of daylight and then I would
(03:01):
come and do my house to work's job at night,
and um, I never slept, if you're wondering, and I
on like the third day I was filming, we did this.
It was a horror movie, so I got covered in
fake It wasn't blood, it was like it was goop
and it was made of Hershey's syrup. And we did
(03:21):
it like the first thing in the day, so it
like set, you know, and I didn't have time to
watch it off before I went to work. Are then
very fancy how stuff works office in Buckhead. I figured
at nine pm, no one will be there. I think
it was a Tuesday. Wrong, very wrong to have my
producer was. They were not only still there, but they
(03:42):
were drinking moonshine out of jars that a fan had
sent Josh and Chuck over stuff. You should know, orange
flavored move shine. If that fan happens to be listening.
We didn't drink it, and so I walked in fro
was covered in this fake what looked like blood but
it wasn't. And they said not a word, but offered
me some moonshine, and I took it silently and got
(04:05):
to work well. And also the lights were off. That's
none of this is actually surprising to me. I hope
that that gives you. I hope that my complete lack
of surprise gives you all a little bit of a
peek behind the curtain of what it certainly has been
like working for this company. I will say this was
(04:25):
very early in my career here for me, So I
was like, I see yeah, I see No, I mean
we're we like sharing a drink. We do, and we're
not easily freaked out. Both true, both true. But okay, well,
let's get to a question. Yes, moonshine, what is it? Well,
(04:55):
moonshine is a catch all word for distilled alcohol made
by home producers. Confusingly, though, the term is now also
applied to unaged or or white whiskey manufactured by commercial
producers who are doing it legally in the United States. Anyway,
it does get a little confusing, it does. Um. White
whiskey is simply whiskey, being a category of alcohol, is
(05:19):
made from a mash of some type of grain um
that has not been aged in barrels and thus has
not picked up any of the flavors or colors that
come from that aging process. The aging process can also
filter out some undesirable flavors and can allow some harsher
compounds to evaporate out. Therefore, white whiskeys tend to be
very sharp in flavor compared with aged whiskeys. Yes, most
(05:43):
moonshine made by home producers in the United States at
any rate is indeed white whiskey, and the most common
grain type used is apparently corn um, although producers probably
use what's available and won't attract too much attention because
home distillery is super illegal in the United States. Oh yeah, Um,
I've heard of fruit and even granulated sugar being the
(06:04):
main ingredients. Um. Those technically would produce brandies and RUMs,
but you know who's counting. Like with any distilled alcohol,
moonshine is going to start out by you mixing water
and your main ingredients of corn, wheat, barley, fruit, whatever,
um and heating them to make their starches break down
and their sugars become more available, which you want to
(06:25):
do because you then either let wild yeast grow in
it or you add yeast, which which will eat those
sugars and poop alcohol and flavor fermentation used poop. When
you distill alcohol, UH, what you're doing is heating that
fermented liquid to the point where the booze that you
(06:45):
want evaporates, but but the stuff that you don't want,
which is everything else, really does not. UM. You then
collect the boozy vapor and cool it until it condenses
into liquid again. And this is fairly easy to do
because alcohol compounds hit their boiling point at much low
temperatures than water does. So like if you bring a
still up to about seventy eight degrees celsius a hundred
and seventy two fahrenheit UM, the steam coming off of
(07:08):
it will be mostly alcohols. But not all alcohols are
created equal, no UH. Distillers talk about their products having
three parts during the process, the heads, the tails, and
the hearts. The heads are what come off of the
still first UM as it's heating up, and these are
compounds that hit their boiling point below that seventy eight celsius,
(07:29):
including a lot of stuff that you don't want to
consume because it is poison, like acetone and a seatles
tull to hide. I think we're gonna go with that.
It's like take five, y'all anyway, UM, and also methanol.
The tails are what come off way towards the end,
alcohols with higher boiling points, plus some like oils and
(07:52):
other stuff like glycerin, which you also generally don't want
to consume, but more because they taste weird than because
they're dangerous. The heart, meanwhile, is what evaporates through the
still in the middle of the process, lots of ethyl alcohol,
which is what you do want. UM. Knowing how to
tell the difference among the three and thus collecting mostly
(08:12):
hearts is key to creating a tasty and safe product,
and running the hearts through the still a second or
third time can help you get more of what you
wanted less of what you don't. M a moonshine maybe
even sharper still than than unaged alcohols that are commercially produced.
Because distillation is such an involved chemistry UM, and some
(08:34):
producers might cut corners by like not doing those extra
runs or not using filters or possibly adding extra stuff
to the mash to attempt to speed fermentation or otherwise
game the system somehow. Um or they might make it
perfectly but just leave it very high proof, like up
to around a hundred and fifty proof, which is way
higher than most of us are used to. Your your
average commercial whiskey or vodka or whatever is down around
(08:55):
like eight proof. So yeah, I looked this up when
I got my bottle of moonshine because I just want
to be clear, like what you were in for gin,
but how much alcohol is in there? And I think
it was double specific it was it was more, Yes,
it was more more than more than usual. Um yeah,
(09:16):
So so okay. So generally, when you're talking about moonshine,
you're talking about something that will be kind of lightly sweet,
maybe have some kind of flavor based on some specific
flavor based on whatever went into it, some of that
kind of corn or something like that. Um, but then
a but then a pretty pretty serious biter burn, the
kind of thing that makes you go, who Yes, I
(09:38):
think I think I did that the last time that
I had a white whiskey with you and Dylan when
we were in uh Kentucky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that
was good. Oh that was a thing I like, I
stepped away from the bar, I would I was like, waw,
all right, that's happening. Um. But yes, but moonshine, if
a moonshiner knows what they're doing, it's not dangerous. Um.
(10:00):
But you know that is a trustful because it's not
regulated because it's illegal. Yes, yes, anyway, we'll talk about
that more in a second, will Um. But now nutrition
drink responsibly. Yeah. An ounce of a hundred proof white
(10:20):
whiskey has about eighty to ninety calories. It's it's alcohol.
Drink responsibly, very much. Drink responsibly. Yes, and yeah, a
bad batch of moonshine can indeed make you go blind. Um,
sometimes due to the addition of lie to speed deformentation.
This is more in the past thing. But you know,
um or even kill you. And some producers cry foul,
(10:41):
claiming this is a rumor started and spread by legal
producers to shut down the less than legal stuff or
maybe the government. I don't know, they had they had
a huge campaign against it, right Oh yes, oh yes
they did. Um. I would say moonshine is like a
big middle finger to the government United States. It is
who buddy it is. We are going to get into
(11:02):
that in the history some but but but but one
one quick factory to they got Louis Armstrong involved in it.
Didn't think they did at the invest Yeah, the government
requested it, um, and he recorded several ads about the
potential dangers of consuming moonshine, and it was this was
just one part of the poison moonshine plublicity program. Oh,
(11:22):
this is a whole okay, alright, so in this is
sort of like a prohibition side note more than a
moonshine side note. But since we're talking about it, all right,
it is completely true that methanol can cause blindness and
respiratory paralysis, which can lead to death. UM. So if
a moonshiner isn't paying attention and leaves methanol in their hooch,
that's bad times. UM. Methanol boils off first during the
(11:46):
heads phase and is sometimes specified as a whole fourth
category during distillation, the four shots it's called. However, I
am not sure about the veracity of the lie thing
past or or present. Um, And for sure, a lot
of the deaths from poisonous booze during prohibition were due
to the government requiring industrial producers of alcohol to deliberately
(12:09):
poison their product so that any moonshiner who was attempting
to use that industrial alcohol redistill it into moonshine would
poison their customers and possibly themselves. Wow. Um. Some estimates
put the death toll from this program above ten citizens. Um.
It is a fascinating and terrific story for another day. Um,
(12:31):
if you'd like to read about it. Slate has a
great article on the subject called The Chemist's War. And yeah,
so so I know, you know it's it's it's not
in a moonshiner's interest to poison their customer base. Sure
I do. Back in like when we did our Gin episode. Um,
I don't know. They weren't like trying to do it,
(12:53):
fir saure. They were just kind of experimenting, trying to
trying to stretch, trying to make a profit, trying to
get stuff out quicker. Yeah, sure it happens. You know
sometimes I guess according to that Gin tour Um, you're
really good numbers. Yeah, it's legal. It's really hard to
(13:15):
track down numbers on that, very difficult. And this brings
us to your question is moonshine like legal? Um, the
official Oxford English Dictionary definition is moonshine is whiskey or
other strong alcoholic drinks made and sold illegally. But you
might be thinking, I've definitely seen something called been trying
at the store apple pie flavored. Yeah, it just comes
(13:38):
down to that lack of federal requirements in place around
defining what can be called moonshine, right, yeah, and um,
there aren't the same guidelines that are in place around
something like bourbon, which we've talked about. Yeah. Absolutely, Um. Yeah, Also,
in some other countries you can totally distill booze at home,
So if you categorize any home to old boozes moonshine,
(14:01):
then moonshine can be legal. Depending on where I live.
I definitely thought it was legal. But alright, Georgia, something
about me. Um, Distilling alcohol at home is legal in
US because it's easy to make a mistake resulting in
a dangerous product, and that's typically the whole mystique of
moonshine here. Yeah, she's dangerous. It's legal and distilled by
(14:24):
someone deep and but moonshiner is making product illegally are
more likely to be charged with tax evasion and money laundering,
and that could mean up to fifteen years in prison. Yeah.
The thing is that the Feds can only get you
for five years in prison, up to five years for
making moonshine, but they can get you for up to
fifteen for tax evasion. Goodness, so they want those taxes.
(14:48):
I mean, this whole thing kind of boils down to that.
It does. Yes, um an important distinction. Moonshiners are people
that are making the stuff and bootleggers are the ones
that smuggle it. The word bootleger refers to a practice
dating back to the eighteen eighties of smuggling flask in
your boots. Yeah, big high boots. Yes, they're very useful.
(15:09):
Once automobiles came on the scene, the term evolved to
mean anyone smuggling liquor. In the myth a legend of
moonshine is really impressive, especially here in the South. Although
I mean, did you have like a moonshine zero? Yeah,
no Ohio and neither Ohio North South Florida are are
(15:30):
part of the whole like moonshine trail and not is
yeah or I mean not not not to my personal
knowledge at any rate, I'm sure that that that like
Cleveland during Prohibition was bumping with some moonshine, but um,
but yeah not not. By the time I got there,
things have changed. Also, I was seven, so yeah, you're
like tuned into the moonshine gossips. Okay. When I was
(15:56):
growing up in small town Georgia, um, there were so
many rumors about where you could get moonshine, who was
making it, and secret sellers in the woods. And I
know for sure one of them was factor um and
it was really mythic um. I wish I could go
into more. I don't want to get anyone in trouble. Yeah,
(16:16):
but it has a reputation and it has a lot
of nicknames as well. Goodness, yes, who white lightning, rot gut,
mountain dew and used to come with a mountain dew.
It'll tickle your inherts, tickle your innerts, I agree, skull pop,
panther's breath or panther's piss or just shine um. And yeah, yeah,
(16:41):
it was a big defiance to the to the U. S. Government.
It is it is um or certainly not yes, has
been and still is. Yeah, I do know, I do know,
at least two people who have family members who have
or still do make moonshine. I've been told, I've been
(17:03):
told of their stills. Yeah, it's it is, it's a
whole thing's it's it's kind of part of that wonderful
Southern Gothic like storytelling kind of tradition of of just
you know, like like like this is what we're up to,
like let me let me paint you a story kind
of thing. Yes, yes, um, and and one of those
(17:24):
stories that you might hear. And I find it fascinating
that we see this reflected in so much science fiction. Um,
is that you can use moonshine or whatever sci fi
equivalent as fuel? Oh sure, Um. Some of it was,
and I'm sure still is distilled in car gradiators, which
(17:44):
was not safe. No, imagine, No, no, you don't want
to know. You generally want to do distillation in copper
because copper is one of the things that doesn't leach
bad stuff into your alcohol, as opposed to something like
a lead pipe, which does. Yes, you don't want that. No, no, no,
not at all. But this about brings us to some
(18:08):
fascinating history. Yes, but first it brings us to a
quick break for a word from our sponsor and we're back.
Thank you sponsoring. Okay, so this is some really fascinating stuff.
(18:30):
I'm really excited. Um. The first use of moonshine, the
English word goes back to the fifteen century, literally meaning
shine of the moon and figuratively quote appearance without substance, pretense,
or fiction. And the first time it was used to
refer to liquor. That didn't occur until the eighteenth century England,
(18:50):
and it's specifically referred to illegal or smuggled alcohol. That's
why the name, because smugglers used the cover of night
to smuggle their goods, which didn't necessary have to be moonshine. Yes,
but but um, Smuggling alcohol was common in Europe at
the time, and smugglers had only the shine of the
moon to guide their pass. Moonlight was sometimes used in
(19:12):
the same sense as moonshine was until the nineteenth century. Yeah,
and for a while there any job or activity that
was done late at night might be called moonshining or moonlighting.
But eventually moonshine came to really basically mean booze and
booze related activities, and moonlighting came to mean that other
thing that moonlighting means I totally forgot about moonlighting. Yeah,
(19:36):
that's true. I remember because it was a company stipulation
that you couldn't moonlight, and I had to get a
thing that said I could when I was doing that movie. Anyway,
there's actually a folk tale from the time about a
group of smugglers caught in the act of raking the pond.
The pond a pond for barrels of smuggled French brandy. Um.
(19:59):
Then they were caught by some tax collectors in the
middle of the act, yes, and thinking on their feet,
the smugglers pretended to be a group of confused, drunk
people trying to rake in the moon's reflection or, in
their drunken parlance, cheese. Yeah. Yeah. They were like, nah, dude,
we're not there's no certainly no barrels of brandy in there.
(20:21):
We're just trying to get the sweet cheese out of
this pond. Are so drunk? Yeah, This bulletproof ploy obviously worked,
and the dat collectors labeled the smugglers as moon rakers
and went about their married way. I'm sure laughing about
all those silly drunk people. And moonshine was oftent typically
made at night in hopes no one would see the
(20:42):
smoke from the stoves. It got its start in America
in grain producing states like Pennsylvania. Yeah, immigrants from England
and Scotland and Ireland who settled in Appalachia brought their
whiskey recipes with them and adopted them for whatever grains
were they were growing around here. And instead of letting
excess grain go to waste, producers distilled it. Not only
(21:04):
could you drink or maybe sell this stuff, but in
some places it was an accepted currency. It could be
the difference between surviving and not. Oh yeah, it was
a big economic um. Uh, maybe not staple, but but
side game. It was so in when the U. S governments,
you know, seeing all of this, implemented the whiskey tax
(21:25):
in an effort to pay off the cost of the
Revolutionary War. Uh, people were were happy about it. No. No,
Also thanks to this for letting me once again look
up the Alexander Hamilton sound jack, because they say, and
they're Jefferson is doing like a there's a cabin map
and he says, when Brittain tax ort, we got frisky.
(21:46):
Imagine what's going to happen if you've go to tax
on whiskey, and it was true. I mean, it's what
it was right after the Revolutionary War. And some people's
you know, like like mentality about it was like we
just we just went to war about taxa without representation.
Why why why are you gonna taxes for this now? Yeah,
And it was a big shift from it was basically
(22:09):
States rice versus a federal bank. And so we were
still fingering out in a lot of stuff. You're a
new country, um, and yeah, we talked about this sum
in our our Bourbon Whiskey episode. So yeah, people didn't
like it. Distillers resorted to all sorts of things to
evade this tax. The point the U. S. Marshal descended
(22:29):
upon Pennsylvania coming to collect, and his presence was not welcomed.
Five hundred men attacked the home of the local tax
inspector general and during the skirmish, the group's leader was killed,
which escalated into a protest made up of over six
thousand people. President George Washington sent thirteen thousand troops to
(22:52):
deal with the situation. Who yes, all of this was
part of the Whiskey Rebellion. In eighteen o one, the U. S.
Government repealed the whiskey tax um, and this was one
of our new country's first test Yeah, the Whiskey Rebellion.
We're serious about it or um. And before and after this, though,
(23:16):
moonshining really took off in the South. Tales were told
about gunfights between collectors trying to get excise taxes from
moonshiners in the eighteen sixties. These skirmishes increased as the
revenuers came around trying to collect excise taxes for the
Civil War. Yeah, during and after the Civil War, times
were particularly hard for a lot of Americans, and there
(23:37):
was again a lot of resentment from people who were
scraping to make a living off of things like moonshine
towards these taxes, and moonshiners came together with the Ku
Klux Klan as this conflict against the tax collectors and crew,
and several battles ensued. As desperation went up, moonshiners became
(23:58):
more ruthless and violent in their tactics, attacking I R
S members and their families and anyone who they believed
may give away the location of us. Still, and this
did not endear moonshiners to their communities and the public.
Opinions started to shift towards the negative end when it
came to moonshiners. At the same time, temperance is getting
(24:21):
more and more public support in the Georgia Mountains. In
eighteen seventy six, four fifths of the court cases in
federal law enforcement focus was on illegal outool. Yeah. Um,
I wanted to mention too. Wasn't just a man's world? No.
Take Nancy the moonshiner. Um. She was in New Jersey
(24:44):
in eighteen eighties. Her neighbors largely regarded her as eccentric,
and I can see why because under the cover of
night she would steal apples and use those apples to
make what she called Jersey lightning or apple check. Okay, yes,
that is a Milo pony. By the way, a detective
(25:05):
on her case snuck onto her property, but Nancy knocked
him out and to skate Nancy. We can't output root
for them. Oh no. Um. Then there was Moonshine Mary,
a Polish immigrant out of Illinois who made moonshine and
sold shots of it out of her home for fifteen cents.
But she went on to become the first woman in
(25:27):
that state to be convicted for selling poison liquor, and
as we've discussed before, women were also involved in the
transporting of illegal alcohol. Um there's Willie Carter Sharp who
gave testimony to the moonshine conspiracy trial with diamond studied teeth,
(25:49):
diamond studied teeth that you know nothing but respect. I
couldn't pull it off. That is about as America as
you get. I think you're at a moonshine trial. You've
been arrested twelve times what she was, and you show
up with time and studed teeth. Yeah, yeah you do.
(26:12):
You're right, You're right. But here we come to the
nineteen twenties and prohibition for moonshine. This was the best
thing that could have happened. Now that you couldn't buy
alcohol bi legal means more people were seeking out illegal
sources for their booze, and moonshine had been rocking that
for for a while already. UM demand was so great,
(26:35):
moonshiner's resorted to water down alcohol and sugar based moonshine
as opposed to crane based speak easies with passwords and
secret ways to escape in case the authorities ever showed up,
and organized crime around the smuggling and sale of alcohol flourish. Yeah,
in hot spots like in one Franklin County, Virginia. It's
(26:56):
been estimated that of the residents were involved in the
moonshine trade ring this time, and so that's a lot
of kids as well, you know. Yeah, okay, okay. During
the nineteen thirties, moonshiners from Dawson County, which is the
big city from where I grew up in our high
school rival they transported melons of gallons of moonshine to Atlanta,
(27:22):
and my very own home county of Lumpkin was big
in the moonshine scene in the thirties and forties as well.
And also distillers sometimes use the bone from a raccoons penis. Yes,
they do have bones, they do in the distilling process.
The man in Dawsonville gave me the history lesson, like
I said, he had one in his hat. Uh and yes,
(27:42):
like I said, he had previously worked for NASA's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah,
I think the I think the penis bone is is
used to help control the flow of the spirit from
the condensing hose into the collection vessel, like at the
end of the process. I think that's yeah, that's he
showed us how to use what it was used for.
(28:03):
I don't know, but yeah, I think that was that
was it. It It was the right size for the spout, right, yeah. Yeah.
And it's kind of got this little like s curve
shape so so, and sort of a little groove in
it where the urethra goes. So I read a surprising
amount about raccoon penises during research for this episode. Never
know I was gonna go. I was like, well, there
(28:26):
you are. This is your life, your profession. I sometimes
I sometimes hope that like some government official has to
look at my search, my searches someday to just go like, oh,
dear what, Oh I don't even know me too. I
like to imagine there's one person assigned to you and
you're just making their life super interesting and disturbed. Well
(28:52):
you're welcome, So back to moonshine. Right. Anyway, business was
booming until prohibition was repealed in nineteen thirty three. Then
sales flattened, and that that didn't mean it went away
much the annoyance of the federal government who tried to
wrangle this moonshine situation into the seventies without these laws
(29:16):
prohibiting alcohol, although there are still dry counties, and they're
obviously were back then. Um, going to the trouble seeking
out moonshine for the average person just wasn't worth it.
In order to transport as much moonshine as possible, mechanics
would fine tune their cars, upgrading the engine and adding
in secret compartments for the product. Um shocks and springs
(29:39):
were installed to protect the booze, and I read accounts
of oil slicks smoke springs. These were called tanker cars,
and we're frequently unassuming nineteen forties forwards, and I think
I read this whole thing about Henry Ford being like
a teetotaler, being so offended about Yes, that's fun. And
(30:03):
drivers who were also called runners are trippers had to
have some real driving know how, some sweet moves, as
they say, to evade the authorities. They also had to
know all the mountain back roads well enough to drive
them in the dark without headlights. One of their moves
was called the bootleg turn, a quick turnaround into a
(30:23):
controlled skid. In their spare time, these drivers would work
on their skills by racing against each other, sometimes at fairgrounds,
sometimes for pay, sometimes with thousands of spectators. So okay.
Once prohibition went away and World War Two ended, there
was this group of skilled drivers who had suped up
(30:44):
cars and enjoyed racing each other, who saw that people
would pay to watch them race, and they were in
the market for a new job. So in this gave
birth to NASCAR. Supposedly, the winner of the very first
race used the same car to make a run like
(31:04):
a week previous. Oh my goodness, I love it. I
do too. I had no idea about this. And we
rolled up at that distillery and there's all this NASCAR memorabilia.
This is interesting, But for real, Moonshine and NASCAR are
and we're tight. Raymond Parks. Moonshiner was the first to
(31:25):
bring together a formal official racing team. He had a
lot of money, most of it from illegal bootlegging, perhaps
particularly in our home base of Atlanta. Two of his
cousins were Roy Hall and Lloyd the Lightning. I think
it's c A. I I'm not if. If it's not,
(31:46):
then I have to apologize to to a mutual friend
of ours for how I've been pronouncing his name. Oh dear,
oh dear, I I like I was telling Lauren. I
tried to look this up beforehand, and I found a
lot of great videos about the Moonshine Festival in Dawsonville,
but I did not find any pronunciation. Anyway, we did,
(32:07):
we knew these were two of the best trippers. Um
Lloyd was the winner of the first big stock car
race in on Atlanta's Lakewood Speedway when start car racing
resumed post World War Two. Police band five racers Hall
included for hauling illegal alcohol and it almost led to
(32:27):
a riot. Thirty thousand people chanted Hall's name. Yes, he
had sixteen arrest and his driver's license had been rebound,
but police gave into the pressure and allowed the bootleggers
to race. Yep. Okay, And as I learned on my
moonshine adventure, I guess I wasn't hip to this. But
(32:52):
we have a saying, well, they have a saying in Dawsonville.
Awesome Bille from Dawsonville and his son Chase from the
same place. I love it from a safe place, Dawsonville. Yep.
Dawsonville has a mountain Moonshine festival every year. And if
you do the beautiful Amicalola hike, which my recommendation is
(33:13):
do it in the fall, do it early, it will
be packed, and then go to burps. Far back after
Um you can see the remains of a bootlegger truck
from the nineteen forties that slid off the road and
plummeted two hundred feet and when it was discovered in
the nineteen seventies, several jars of moonshine were found in
Oh Wow. One of the people who most exemplified Moonshine's
(33:36):
connection to NASCAR was Junior Johnson, and Johnson won pretty
big early on in his NASCAR career, but he went
to jail soon after for eleven months for moonshining, and
when he got back, he went right back to moonshining
and right back to racing. In six he received a
pardon for his moonshining from President Reagan, a pardon from
(33:59):
room shining Um. But people still got in all kinds
of trouble for moonshining UM. In nine, at least one
arrest was made after authorities found a still buried underneath
a fake cemetery in the aforementioned Franklin County, Virginia. UM.
The moonshiners had like erected fake tombstone and laid down
(34:21):
artificial flowers on the grays because you could like just
see it from the road. Um, there's this. There's this
article in a local paper about it, and it quoted
a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent one Jim
Hunt as saying, yes, sir, that was a good one.
It was something I'll tell you that I concur oh
(34:44):
fake with flowers. Wow Ah. Nowadays there are some distilleries
making white whiskey legally and selling it as moonshine. The
first instance of this that I could find was a
UM this craft white whiskey distillery out of Virginia in
the late eighties called Belmont Farm Distillery UM, run by
(35:06):
the grandson of a moonshiner. Production started really increasing during
the recent recession, when some states began loosening regulations around
distilling UM, leading to more craft distillers opening up shop,
including in areas where moonshine had always been made UM,
like eastern Tennessee, which is where popular company Whole Smoky
popped up. In UM, sales of legal products labeled moonshine
(35:30):
UM really picked up in the twenty teens. They increased
a thousand percent between Yeah, UM Yeah. Old Smokey distributes
through like Walmart and Sam's Club. Another company, Palmetto out
of South Carolina, distributes to the UK and South Africa,
and uh Big companies like Jack Daniels and Jim Beam
have both released white Whiskeyes of their own. Wow. Yeah,
(35:53):
I think it because I have noticed I see it
more on menus lately, and I think it is something
like you see it shine. Yeah, there's it is. It
is popular among millennials UM in the Discovery series Moonshiner's
debuted UM, which if you have not seen it's a
(36:15):
it's dramatic nonfiction, meaning it portrays what illegal distilling was
and is like without actually doing anything illegal docu drama.
UM portions of it are from actual documentaries UM, including
parts about a famous or or infamous modern moonshiner by
the name of Marvin or Popcorn Sutton, who was so
(36:37):
dedicated to the FU government part of moonshining that tragically
in two thousand nine, at the age of sixty four,
he took his own life rather than serving a term
in prison. His tombstone reads Popcorn said, Q you oh,
I I love this guy. It sounds like something i'd
(37:04):
hear in a nightmare. Oh yeah, yeah that that his
name being Popcorn just touched you, didn't it did? Well.
I hope that this doesn't disturb your sleep well you know. Yeah,
but the job, I guess it is. I guess it is.
(37:25):
And yeah, yeah, the Discovery show Moonshiners is still going.
It's just aired its eighth season again. It's just got
this whole first mythology. Yeah. When I when I went
to it the distillery, I immediately when I out there,
I thought, why We've got to do an episode on this,
(37:47):
because this is so I hadn't been considered. Yeah, just
how much there is kind of wrapped it's wrapped up
in all this like secrecy. Yeah. And the Whiskey rebellion
is so well, I mean horrifying, great and yeah, fascinating stuff.
The whole poison moonshine campaign was so weird. Ah yeah, yeah,
(38:11):
it's it's just it's still strange to me that it's illegal,
but like like widely accepted to be a thing that
people do. Yeah, partially specifically because they're like ha ha
tax evasion. Yeah yeah, yeah, America, goodness, a bunch of
(38:35):
tax invators. We are, we are dedicated to our tax
evasion and too slightly dangerous pursuits. It's got to be
some risk of blowing up involved, right right, yeah, what
are you even doing there? Is um uh. And during
my research I found a great article on gizmoto that
(38:58):
that talks a little bit of out the science of
moonshine and how to make it. And the author starts
it off by saying, oh my god, people die from this.
People burn their houses down, people explode themselves, people poison themselves.
Learn from this article. Use it to inform your upcoming
sci fi novel about space speakeasies during space prohibition. It'll happen,
but don't actually do this. I was like, well, yeah, yeah,
(39:26):
I don't think we could have said it better than that.
Just wrap, wraps it up, just neat little bow right
on topshine episode. We do have a little bit more
for you, but but first we've got one more quick
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(39:49):
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, and we're back with listen.
It was like a moon wave and then the ripples
of the thing dropping. I go too complicated. Sometimes I
(40:11):
wasn't following it, but I liked it. Oh thank you. Yeah, Yeah,
you're welcome. Anytime trying to paint a picture, it doesn't
always succeed. Caden wrote, I'm a big fan and I
just listened to your airline food episode and I loved it.
Thank you. You mentioned different options for picking food, and
I wanted to share my experience. I go to South
(40:32):
Africa to see my extended family a lot, and we
fly Emirates with a layover in Dubai. Brutal flight last year,
my dad picked me out of kid's meal for me
and I kid you not. They served candy and cake
for breakfast. Okay, I'm done. I am as well. I
didn't know this was a thing the kid options. Oh
it's just candy and cake on it. When you're in
(40:54):
a metal tube hurtling through the sky and your parents
can't do anything with you, what kind of monsters? I
don't know, but I'm gonna get it another kids are
gonna see it and they're gonna get mad. Yeah. Oh
that's great. Just a rebel rouser in my own way. Yeah.
Chavon wrote, you mentioned in the episode that raw rubarb
(41:16):
is usually far too tart to eat. Raw. We used
to grow rhubarb in the garden of my childhood home,
and once a year, when it was just ripe, I
was allowed by my mom to have one stick of
rubarb to eat, with a small bowl of sugar to
dip it in before each bite. I would usually manage
to get sticky red stains everywhere, stained fingers, stained t shirts,
stained shorts. I loved it so much, and I would
definitely recommend trying it the next time you buy it fresh.
(41:38):
It's delicious, if a little messy. I'm not sure if
maybe it's just a UK thing, but I think it's
pretty common here and not just my family. I haven't
had rubarb in so many years, and your episode made
me very nostalgic. I want to check all the grocery
stores in my town tomorrow to see if any of
them have any late crop that I can dip in
sugar like I did when I was little. And a listener,
Heather from Minnesota root in about this as well and
(42:00):
said it's fairly common in her area, so maybe where
rubarb is a thing like not so hard to find? Sure? Yeah, yeah,
I never we never ate a row when I was
growing up. But that sounds sticky and amazing and delicious.
Yeah yeah, I um I did a massive answering of
all the emails today and so as I um put
(42:24):
these in, a lot of people wrote in about Ruebarb.
So I'm glad that Hey, no, no, but I used
to do this with strawberries. But you're already pretty sweet.
But I loved it. It's simple. Yeah, the texture of
the sugar gets a little bit of a crunch and
it gets a little litle clumpy. Yeah. Anyway, thanks to
(42:48):
all three of them for writing. If you would like
to write to us, we would love to hear from you.
Our email is hello at saborpod dot com. We're also
on social media. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter. All three we are at savor Pod. We
do hope to hear from you. Savior is a production
of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can visit the I Heart
(43:09):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thank you, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thank you to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
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