Moonshine stills are used to create homemade whiskey mash, with distillation often done at night. The device is a copper pot with a vent leading to a coiled copper tube for storage. Moonshining is illegal in some places, and the stills are often hidden in remote locations near streams. The corn mash is heated to vaporizing point, and the distilled liquid is pure grain alcohol. It is illegal to make and sell alcohol without a proper license.
A moonshine still is an appliance designed to create a homemade whiskey mash called a “moon.” It gets its name because the distillation operations are often performed under cover of darkness, ideally when the moon was full. The cool night air also helps with the distillation process, as the vapor is converted back into liquid form. There are many different design variations on the basic alembic, but essentially it is a large copper pot with a tight lid and a narrow conical vent at the top. This vent leads the vapors through a coiled length of copper tubing and finally into a container for storage.
Since the production of alcohol without a license is illegal in some places, including the United States, a moonshine could still be hidden deep in a mountainous region. Ideally, it would be installed near a flowing stream, which would serve as a primary cooler for the copper pipes. The moonshiner first mixed together a slurry of cornmeal, sugar, water, and yeast in a large container, then transferred the mixture into the device itself. After a few days of fermentation, this “maize mush” would acquire a characteristic smell, which is why the alembic is generally set up in isolated places.
Once the corn mash has had time to ferment, it is heated with a gas burner or even firewood, although the heat source must be controllable. The corn slurry is heated thoroughly to the vaporizing point, around 173°F (about 78°C). The wort should never reach boiling point at any time. The must vapors are drawn into the narrow cone at the top of the still and finally through the spiral copper tube. The tube could be contained in a second vase or placed under the running water of a nearby stream.
The distilled liquid that eventually drips from the end of the copper coil is pure grain alcohol, or moonshine. It is usually stored in clay jugs or Mason canning jars after production, then sold illegally by bootleggers. A clairvoyant may own the alembic and create the product, but often leaves it to others to sell or store it. Quality moonshine can still cost a lot of money to make, so moonshiners often go to great lengths to hide their operations from government officials and others.
It is legal to own moonshine still in the United States, but it is illegal to make and sell alcohol without a proper license. Many home brew enthusiasts use a high-tech version to brew other distilled beverages for their own personal consumption. Before investing in a home distillery system, however, it pays for people to know the local laws surrounding the production of alcoholic beverages.
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