Making moonshine is legal in these hills

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau states that no one can produce any spirits for beverage use without paying any taxes and with no prior paperwork approval to operate a distilled spirits plant.

The following is a list of distilleries that are legally making moonshine.

Dawsonville, Georgia

Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery is located in the same place as the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame. It is also situated within Dawsonville’s City Hall. However, the local government is not taking steps to halt its operation. It even sold out the first batch of liquor it produced for the Mountain Moonshine Festival. The distillery is currently working on its third corn whiskey batch and business is still flowing.

How is this possible?

Cheryl Wood is the owner of Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery. She explains that hard work and legal requirements were necessary to make her dreams a reality. It took her months to plan and acquire permits to make her moonshine dreams possible. She also quit her job in the phone company she was working for and decided to go full time distilling. Plus, she borrowed tons of money. Her efforts are now paying off.

It also helped that Wood comes from a long line of moonshiners. Literally, moonshine runs in her blood. Her grandfather was a popular moonshiner named Simmie Free. She also got help from “backwoods distiller” Dwight Bearden and “still hand” Bob Suchke. All three brought in their years of experience growing up with moonshine.

The moonshine trade helped feed their families back when they were children. Bearden is a fourth-generation moonshiner.

Currently, the business is utilizing a 250-gallon moonshine copper still, two 415-gallon stainless steel mash and another 1,050 gallon steel mash. There are plans to expand and add in more equipment and help.

Make a Corn Mash Recipe The Lazy Way

Serious hobbyists purposely purchase stills for sale in an effort to create their own mash recipe. The process is laborious for some that innovative distillers have decided to create a corn mash recipe that requires little standing and stirring.

Below is a recipe that requires no boiling. However, it does not mean that no cooking is involved. Essentially, heat is applied for a long time period in order to turn the corn in a gelatinous state. Stirring is still necessary but not as much. This recipe was developed for a 12 pound grain bill along with six gallons of liquid with the sparge and backset used from a previous wash.

First step: The pre-soaking process requires that you boil one and a half gallon of backset making sure to add this to all grains other than the malt. Include cold water in order to decrease the temperature to 150 to 155 degrees F. Then, add half a teaspoon of alpha. Stir it well and seal off the bucket. Allow it to sit for two days.

Using the backset has been said to help the acid break the starches loose. Adding alpha helps the corn from converting to a solid mass and instead produce a gooey thick porridge that could be removed easily from the bucket.

Questions You Need To Ask If You’re New To Alcohol Distilling

If you’ve just purchased raw materials, equipments or any stills for sale, try not to be too excited that you make yourself forget the basics in distilling alcohol. If you’re a novice, the following are common questions you need to ask before embarking on the craft of distilling.

What does distillation mean?

Ethanol distillation involves the boiling as well as re-condensing of ethanol, water and trace liquids such as congeners, higher alcohols, fusel oils. The objective of distillation is to decrease the amount of water while increasing ethanol and removing most, if not all, of the trace liquids. This process is made possible due to ethanol and water’s contrasting boiling points. 

Take note that ethanol’s boiling point is lower than that of water. Therefore, the vapor that boils off from a mixture of ethanol and water will carry more concentration of ethanol compared to the liquid where the vapor originated from. Essentially, the distillation process is the science of perfecting and controlling these effects.

Stills for sale – Is It Legal?

Have you ever wondered if advertisements for home distilling equipment are legal? Is offering stills for sale legal? Are using stills and/or purchasing stills against the law?

What does the law say?

According to the United States Department of Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, offering stills for sale depends on how the still is to be utilized.

Alcohol may not be produced from these stills unless one qualifies as a distilled spirits plant. A distilled spirits plant is an establishment authorized to distill  warehouse or process spirits or any of its combination. Regulations do not classify distilled spirits plant due to size. Mostly, a distilled spirits plant proprietor could produce specially denatured alcohol, beverage distilled spirits, tax-free alcohol or completely denatured alcohol.

whiskey still?

What is a whiskey still and how does it work?

A whiskey still, also known as a moonshine still, is an equipment designed to produce a homemade mash usually referred to as moonshine or whiskey. 

The term moonshine was derived from the need to operate a distilling system in the dark usually under the light of the full moon. It has been said that the cold night air assists in the process of distillation since vapor is easily turned back into liquid. 

What is a whiskey still?

There are numerous kinds of whiskey still but most possess a large copper pot that has a narrow cone-like vent top and a tight lid. The vent allows the vapors to travel through a copper coiled length tubing and delivered straight into a storage container.

A whiskey still or moonshine still as well as any kind of alcohol distillation is deemed illegal thus its production is usually found hidden in mountainous regions and done under the cloak of darkness. Also, the fermentation process usually produces a distinctive odor thus the need for whiskey stills to be situated in isolated locations.