This beer is then placed in the still, a vessel with a closed head, connected with a spiral tube, the worm. The latter is surrounded by a closed jacket through which cold water is constantly passing. A wood fire is built in the rude furnace under the still; the spirit rises in vapor, along with more or less steam; these vapors are condensed in the cold worm and trickle down into the receiver. The product of this first distillation (the “low wines” of the trade, the “singlings” of the blockader) is a weak and impure liquid, which must be redistilled at a lower temperature to rid it of water and rank oils.
In moonshiners’ parlance, the liquor of second distillation is called the “doublings.” It is in watching and testing the doublings that an accomplished blockader shows his skill, for if distillation be not carried far enough, the resulting spirits will be rank, though weak, and if carried too far, nothing but pure alcohol will result. Regular distillers are assisted at this stage by scientific instruments by which the “proof” is tested; but the maker of “mountain dew” has no other instrument than a small vial, and his testing is done entirely by the “bead” of the liquor, the little iridescent bubbles that rise when the vial is tilted. When a mountain man is shown any brand of whiskey, whether a regular distillery product or not, he invariably tilts the bottle and levels it again, before tasting; if the bead rises and is persistent, well and good; if not, he is prepared to condemn the liquor at once.
It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at one distillation, by running the singlings through a steam-chest, commonly known as a “thumpin’-chist.” The advantage claimed is that “Hit allows you to make your whiskey afore the revenue gits it; that’s all.”
The final process is to run the liquor through a rude charcoal filter, to rid it of most of its fusel oil. This having been done, we have moonshine whiskey, uncolored, limpid as water, and ready for immediate consumption.
I fancy that some gentlemen will stare at the words here italicised; but I am stating facts.
It is quite impracticable for a blockader to age his whiskey. In the first place, he is too poor to wait; in the second place, his product is very small, and the local demand is urgent; in the third place, he has enough trouble to conceal, or run away with, a mere copper still, to say nothing of barrels of stored whiskey. Cheerfully he might “waive the quantum o’ the sin,” but he is quite alive to “the hazard o’ concealin’.” So, while the stuff is yet warm from the still, it is taken by confederates and quickly disposed of. There is no exaggeration in the answer a moonshiner once made to me when I asked him how old the best blockade liquor ever got to be: “If it ’d git to be a month old, it ’d fool me!”
Photo by F. B. Laney
Cornmill and Blacksmith Forge
They tell a story on a whilom neighbor of mine, the redoubtable Quill Rose, which, to those who know him, sounds like one of his own: “A slick-faced dude from Knoxville,” said Quill, “told me once that all good red-liquor was aged, and that if I’d age my blockade it would bring a fancy price. Well, sir, I tried it; I kept some for three months—and, by godlings, it aint so.”