Moonshine by country

Everclear - US

I went to university in Tennessee, and I've heard it called rotgut, fire water, and hooch.

Karen Junker said:

Everclear - US

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No, Karen. With all due respect, Everclear is legal (in some places anyway). It's the highest % of alcohol made by commercial distillers. Moonshine is not. It's a backwoods art.

boron said:

White lightning - is this really a common name for a moonshine produced in the US?

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Yes, in that most everybody knows what white lightning means.

Another name is moonshine (not "a" moonshine) or just 'shine.

boron said:

Other names?

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bathtub gin
corn
hooch

In Newfoundland they call it screech.

Almost everyone in the US knows what white lightning means, but it's not really that commonly used. It's sort of a slang of a slang.

Moonshine, bootleg, white lightning, and other such terms indicate it's illegally made spirits.

The Czechs (and Moravians, they like to remind you they are Moravians) make slivovice, a sort of plum brandy. That's just the name of the liquor, though it's often home-brewed. I've had some home-brew slivovice & it was goooooood.

Dunno about the legality of it, laws in post-communist countries are often odd & irrelevant.

EDIT: Just remembered the name of whatever sort of home-brew wine/brandy/anti-freeze they made in the Porter's Quarters section of Gainesville, Florida: Stone Porters. I never had any. Frankly I might sample the local meth before I tucked into Stone Quarters.

Also, prison home-brew is known as "pruno." It has inspired poetry & internet recipes.

Karen Junker said:

Everclear - US

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Everclear isn't moonshine. It's commercially produced grain alcohol, made and distributed by the large distillery Luxco.

boron said:

I've read in the US it is illegal. So, can an US farmer produce moonshine and sell it directly to customers?

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No. It is illegal in the US to distill and sell alcohol without a license and without paying the appropriate taxes. This article explains it well; there hasn't been a change in Federal law on this since the article's publication in 2007.

Sea Witch said:

No, Karen. With all due respect, Everclear is legal (in some places anyway). It's the highest % of alcohol made by commercial distillers. Moonshine is not. It's a backwoods art.

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I did not know that. When I lived in the backwoods, I knew folks who bought something they called everclear from moonshiners all the time. As far as I know, it was home made, just as was the home brew we made. Maybe things have changed in the past 30 or so years. I'm speaking of the Ozark mountain region, 30 miles from Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The nearest town at the time to where I lived was Golden, MO, though there were no actual buildings left in the 'center' of the town.

ETA: my confusion may have come from the fact that I never saw it in a marked bottle, it came in quart-sized Mason jars.

boron said:

I'm familiar with continental Europe terms. The production of the home-made spirits is often legal, but regulated some way.

I've read in the US it is illegal. So, can a US farmer produce moonshine and sell it directly to customers?

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No, distilled liquors are taxed and tightly controlled by the federal government. Anyone can make fermented or brewed drinks, such as wine or beer, for their own consumption. But distilled liquor is only made by bonded & taxed distilleries.

It's been a contentious issue since the founding of the republic. The earliest federal taxes were excise taxes. This hit farmers in the mountains hardest. Lowland farmers could get crops to market with limited loss & expense. A farmer in the Appalachians was better off converting his surplus crop to whiskey or brandy, more easily transported & stored. The taxes ended up causing the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s.

After the Civil War, the feds needed more revenue so they went back to the whiskey tax. From the 1870s to the 1900s there were constant conflicts between backwoods moonshiners & revenue agents. The taxes were so high that only commercial production by industry would pay.

In the 1920s all alcoholic beverages were banned, which resulted in a massive growth of the already large organized crime sector.

Nowadays you still get some moonshining, but few have the skill to make liquor that isn't toxic. You can get good, clean legal booze relatively cheap with little effort. If someone wants to sell contraband there are more lucrative products.

I've had NC moonshine. It was mildly hallucinogenic! That just can't be good for you.

Italian grappa may count. And that spelling may be off. In any case, it was illegal to have here, but I worked at a restaurant that offered it discreetly to those in the know.

boron said:

If I got it right: not only selling, but even producing moonshine for the personal use is illegal in the US. So asking for moonshine is like asking for illegal drugs?

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Yes.

Now, there are some commercial vendors who sell cutesy pseudo-moonshine liquors, but that's just a marketing gimmick. Those liquors have gone through all the legal hoops before sale.

boron said:

In Ireland, is it poitin (poteen)?

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Yes. And Hooch.

boron said:

If I got it right: not only selling, but even producing moonshine for the personal use is illegal in the US. So asking for moonshine is like asking for illegal drugs?

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Yes.

There are however small-batch boutique distilleries for spiritous liquors--that would include all the forms of whiskey/whisky (rye, bourbon, scotch, corn liquor etc.) as well as gin and vodka, among other rarer types of distilled spirits.

They are licensed, and inspected. This is reasonable; there are a number of things that can go wrong with distilling, and can kill, or permanently damage organs.

These are often very very fine, very legal, very expensive artisan spirits.

IceCreamEmpress said:

Yes.

Now, there are some commercial vendors who sell cutesy pseudo-moonshine liquors, but that's just a marketing gimmick. Those liquors have gone through all the legal hoops before sale.

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I recall a friend on the northside of Jacksonville, FL offering me some "Pure Old Panther Pi$$." It came in a mason jar and had a rather crude printed label. I think that stuff was pseudo-moonshine, though cutesy is in the eye of the beholder.

The Empress is correct about it being legal to make distilled beverages for non-commercial purposes without tax or license. We thank Jimmy Carter for naking some moonshiners legal. I don't recall the maximum that made be made without a license, but it is more than enough to stay sloshed for a year.

Rotgut is not a term for moonshine. It refers to a low quality alcoholic beverage whether distilled or just fermented.

I always understood that everclear was a general term for clear distilled beverages, until someone started using it as a trade name.

It's illegal in the UK too. The only people who operate unlicensed stills tend to be the counterfeiters (i.e. organised gangs refilling labelled bottles with their own produce and selling it on). There have been all sorts of health scares associated with such operations, although they are very rare. Most people would know illicit spirits as 'moonshine', although that is probably thanks to people like The Dukes of Hazzard. As far as I am aware, the production of spirits has never been common in Britain (unlike many other countries, there has never been any prohibition here).

Going back to Boron's original question and the ETA:

"ETA: I'm not interested in what is illegal, but what is domestically produced. Like rakia in many Balkan countries."

A quick check of rakia indicates it is considered the national drink of some of the Balkan countries (40% alcohol).

So in light of that addition to the question, I'd say bourbon would qualify for the type of beverage Boron's looking for. Puma