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Hooch, or moonshine, is an illegal, inexpensive, and inferior corn or grain-based alcoholic beverage made through a complicated distillation process, which involves separating ethanol from a fermented mash. The first and last batches are usually discarded due to high levels of toxic methanol.
Hooch is a colloquial nickname for an illegal corn distilled or grain-based alcoholic beverage, also known as moonshine, PGA (pure grain alcohol), or creek water. Hooch makers and imbibers generally understand the product’s relative inferiority to aged whiskies, but it’s a risk they’re willing to take for an inexpensive intoxicant. The making of hooch usually begins under the cover of darkness, as the distiller creates a mixture of corn, sugar, water, and active yeast in a large copper pot. The interaction between the yeast and the sugars converts a portion of the mash into ethanol, the basic form of alcohol found in all consumer alcoholic beverages.
The ethanol must be separated from the remaining solid slurry to create the hooch. This is accomplished through a home-made distillation unit, which could be a professional arrangement of copper lines and gas burners, or an ad hoc assortment of a car radiator and antique copper pipe. The fermented mash in the copper pot is carefully heated to the point of evaporation, not boiling. This is a particularly complicated part of the hooch-making process, requiring constant supervision and temperature adjustments. Ethanol vapors collect near the top of the closed vessel and are drawn in through a small opening. This conical opening is connected to a coiled copper line.
As hooch vapors begin to cool or condense, drops of pure ethanol form. A car radiator is occasionally used as a condenser, although it may contain traces of propylene glycol or antifreeze. Coiled tubing can also lead across a running creek to provide additional cooling and condensation. The finished barrel slowly drips from the end of the tube into waiting vessels, traditionally metal cans or clay jugs. The very first set of hoochs often contain dangerously high levels of methanol, a toxic form of alcohol also known as wood alcohol. In order to prevent accidental poisonings, moonshine usually discards the first and last batch of hooch over an average night’s production.
Licensed liquor stores may market distilled mash whiskeys as “Pure Grain Alcohol” or even “Georgia Moonshine,” but the term hooch is rarely mentioned in public except as a pejorative to inferior grain alcohols or cheap products.
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