Paul Knorr - Moonshine Cocktails: The Ultimate Cocktail Companion for Clear Spirits and Home Distillers

George Washington and his troops preparing to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion.

The history of moonshine in the United States is as old as the country itself. Many people dont know that the first civil war in the United States was not North versus South, but President George Washington versus a group of distillers in southwest Pennsylvania. What became known as the Whiskey Rebellion started in 1791, when Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton instituted a tax on distilled spirits as part of his program to fund the debt from the Revolutionary War. Many of the people resisting the new tax were veterans of the war against the British and felt that taxation without representation was one of the principals they had fought against. The still owners used violence and intimidation against the federal tax officials that Washington sent until 1794, when Washington dispatched an army of 13,000 to enforce the law and restore order. The episode proved that the newly formed federal government had the willingness and ability to enforce its laws, but even then the tax was never really paid in full. The Pennsylvania distillers simply began to hide most of their production, paying taxes on a small portion of it but moving most of it into the woods and distilling by the light of the moonmoonshining.

After the Whiskey Rebellion, home distilling was a practice that went into hiding, never stopping completely, but faded from public view. Even after Thomas Jefferson repealed the tax in 1801, moonshiners remained hidden but could still be found wherever there was enough demand. The men and women on the American frontier have always prided themselves as being independent and self-sufficient and were resentful of anything that smacked of government meddling. Moonshining wasand isan open secret within the isolated communities of the American West and in the Appalachian Mountains. In some of these communities moonshine can be used for barter and trade, and it has become part of the fabric of life therehidden but as unremarkable as the gas station or the barbershop. It would not be until the institution of another ill-considered act of government that moonshine would once again come into the public eye.

The U.S. government outlawed the sale, production, importation, and transportation of all alcoholic beverages in 1920 under the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This was much worse than President Washingtons simple tax on distilled spirits. The amendment allowed for a set of laws called the Volstead Act to be enacted that dictated an outright ban of all alcohol in the country and started what was to be known as Prohibition. Remarkably, Prohibition was popular with the public at the time it was first proposed and was actually successful in cutting the countrys consumption of alcohol by at least 50 percent. In hindsight it seems obvious, but with shell-shocked soldiers back from World War I and no social safety nets available, it was not as easy to see that the benefits might not outweigh the unintended consequences of the new law.

Speakeasies, moonshining, rum-running, and bathtub gin were all brought to the public consciousness as a result of Prohibition. The newspapers and newsreels were filled with stories of gangs and raids and of the destruction of illegal liquor. Demand from the public was still there and, in fact, was so high that producing spirits or illegally importing them was a job that was becoming too big for any single band of outlaws. Criminals began to join forces, bringing together different groups with different areas of expertise to supply the big cities like Chicago and New York with the liquor that the people wanted. There were criminals that oversaw the moonshine production, those who oversaw the rum-running, and others who were responsible for the speakeasies and various aspects of distribution. All of these smaller operations reported to a central figure or family, giving rise to what was coming to be called organized crime. Crime bosses like Al Capone and Bugs Moran became household names, and the government seemed to be helpless to stop the violence when they would clash over turf.

Prohibition ended in 1933, with the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. It was as much the Great Depression that forced the end of Prohibition as it was the rise of organized crime and the ensuing public outcry. The United States needed the tax revenue that the legal sale of alcohol would bring in, so even though Prohibition was repealed, a new set of laws that regulated and taxed alcohol took its place. These new laws affected the public only a little bit by way of higher prices, but they hit the producers and distributers harder. The laws passed after Prohibition required the licensing and taxing of all alcohol producers and regulated how distilled spirits could be sold, prohibiting distilleries from selling directly to the public.

Today, most people think of moonshine as a product of questionable purity made in the woods on cobbled together equipment by some hillbilly. Drinking it might make you blind or even kill you. It is true that there are some bad shines out there, and some illegal backwoods distillers are cutting corners and making an unsafe product. As anyone who buys illegal moonshine will tell you, you should never buy it from someone you dont know. There are many hazards that a bad, illegal moonshine can have for those drinking it. Ethylene and lead are poisons that can come from either the plumbing or from old car radiators that are sometimes used to cool the vapors from the still. Methanol can cause blindness and is sometimes added by unscrupulous distillers to boost the strength of their finished product. These are risks only associated with illegal, homemade moonshine. The new crop of moonshine distillers that you find in the liquor store are licensed and inspected. They produce a safe product that has all the mystique, flavor, and punch of moonshine and, since they paid their taxes, they are legally in the clear.