For a Stiff Drink, It’s Moonshine’s Time to Shine
They say it can cure what ails you—or make you go blind. Whatever its mischief, bartenders and distillers alike are fired up about firewater.
Thank the Great Recession for the newfound boom in moonshine, that illicit liquor cooked up in backyard stills across America for centuries. Usually fermented from corn mash, it’s like bourbon without a high school diploma.
A slew of Southern states loosened restrictions on distilleries by 2010, and some makers jumped right into the moonshine business. It was a smart move: High-proof, unfiltered firewater is bottled and sold straight from the still; dark liquors must be aged for months, or even years, before yielding a profit. It didn’t take long for the hooch to become a mainstay of craft distilling across the country. (Some, of course, was likely already being made long before 2010.)