Whisky a very peculiar history

The long and storied history of distilled spirits.

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bearriver
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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And here I thought nothing good ever came from the dreaded spider mite.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Took a tour of wigle whiskey in Pittsburg. Learned a little on the whiskey rebellion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Kegg_jam wrote:Took a tour of wigle whiskey in Pittsburg. Learned a little on the whiskey rebellion.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Don't get me started on taxes, I thought I had heard of most absurd taxes until visiting Scotland and seeing windows boarded up as in the 1600-1700's they taxed buildings partly due to the amount of windows, it was called a window tax that taxed the light and air that buildings got from having windows. To avoid the tax they started boarding up and building newer buildings with fewer windows. This didn't help the glass production.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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great stuff fellas!
Buy the ticket and ride the lightnin boys !!!
Impatience is the root of all bad things in my book of makin likker!
The sound of a thumper is the heart beat of the rebel" Warden Pappy"
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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damn i rember this being talked about but must have missed it.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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If you missed Tater's link the other day I am reposting it as it goes directly to the history of whiskey, so it also fits in this thread:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/0 ... MENKYE76rV" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Bushman wrote:COCKTAILS?
Yes, it's a strange name to give to a drink - and no, no-one knows how it happened. The worlds first known cocktail party was held in 1917, in Missouri, USA. Soon, cocktails were very fashionable. At first, a cocktail contained simple spirit, ice, bitters, and perhaps sugar and water. Later the name was given to any mixed drink based on spirits.
I think I know this one. In the years before the war of independence, young American males were not allowed into the political men's clubs in and around Philadelphia. It was in these clubs that a lot of the back room deals were made between the Colonies and Great Britain and these up and coming young leaders were being frozen out of American politics. So they formed their own club. It was called the Macaroni Club and was headquartered in a building they owned at 2nd and Race in Philadelphia. Soon other chapters were set up in all the large cities of the Colonies. Their club badge was a three cornered hat with three long pheasant feathers on it. The Club drink was a mulled ale (a dark beer and a shot of rum)that was heated by putting a red hot poker in it. This done, the owner of the drink put one of the feathers from hat in his drink.(the tail of a cock pheasant - COCK TAIL) All club members called one another- doodles. This was riddled into a members real name to hide his identity.( It worked like this - my club name- Kiwi Bruce, would be kido Broddles) No English politicians ever entered a Macaroni Club and within 5 years of their founding, they were the most powerful political organization in the Colonize.
My wife and I home schooled our three boys. We live very close to the Brandywine Battle field. The above research came about from studying the war song "Yankee Doodle"
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Bushman wrote:Whisky A Very Peculiar History


PERFUME AND PAINT
Distillation has a very ancient history. It was probably invented in the Middle East and used for making perfumes. Pottery jars with rims designed to catch drops of cooled vapor have survived from around 3500 BC. Much later, around 400 BC, Ancient Greek scientists distilled metallic salts, hoping to create longer lasting pigments for artists. By around 1150, in Muslim Spain and multicultural Sicily, experimenters had perfected techniques for distilling alcohol make to preserve medicine.
There was a very damning book that came out in the early 70's written by a Jesuit about the Benedictine's called "The Drunken Order" In it this priest maintained that the Moorish books on distillation came into European hands with the capture of the library at Castel in Spain, and where given to the Order of Librarians, The Benedictine's to translate. When in Catholic Church ran out of money after the second Crusade, they told the different orders to fend for themselves. Some orders had land to farm, some had vineyards, some could make beer. But the Benedictine order of St Michel's turned to their books and were soon distilling. This started off as medicine, Spirit soaked herbs, but soon they were distilling beverage spirits, early brandies. They became wealthy enough to divide their order and start a second order in Portugal which in the mid-fourteenth century moved to Scotland and then to Ireland 50 years later.

So did barley malt distillation start in Scotland or Ireland, who knows. But it did seem that Brandy was the mother of Whiskey distillation.

All very interesting.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Kiwi Bruce, I love reading about the history of distillation as it really does have many different roots.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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My oldest son was reading that it was distilled spirits that stopped the Mongol invasion of Europe. The mongols reached the cities of buda and pest on the Danube in Hungary, in 1235,and stopped for a month to rest. The local city leaders came to make peace, and brought and barrel of local spirits with them as a peace gift. The mongol armies were being lead by the three generals who took over after Genghis khan died.Despite the warning, they refused to water down the drinks, and died that night. The Mongol return gift the the west? How to ferment and preserve milk products....Yogurt.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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kiwi Bruce wrote:My oldest son was reading that it was distilled spirits that stopped the Mongol invasion of Europe. The mongols reached the cities of buda and pest on the Danube in Hungary, in 1235,and stopped for a month to rest. The local city leaders came to make peace, and brought and barrel of local spirits with them as a peace gift. The mongol armies were being lead by the three generals who took over after Genghis khan died.Despite the warning, they refused to water down the drinks, and died that night. The Mongol return gift the the west? How to ferment and preserve milk products....Yogurt.
Fascinating! We had been listening to a pdcast called Wrath of the Khans, and had listened to the first four istallments, right up to the time Gengis Khan died, and the generals were headed for Europe. At that point, it sure did not seem like anything could stop the Mongols. We went to China before listening to the fifth and last installment, so we never knew what stopped the apparently invincible armies of the Mongols from overruning Europe! Imagine! Hooch! White LIghtening! Moonshine! Alcohol poisoning!a Who'd a thunk it!
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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[quote="Kegg_jam"]Took a tour of wigle whiskey in Pittsburg. Learned a little on the whiskey rebellion.

I think the thing that P#sses me off about this incident is the fact that this is the first real chip in the Constitution. Congress was to to pass legislation on taxation, not the President and certainly not The Treasury. And so the slow migration of power away from the States, into the hands of the Federal Government, begins.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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kiwi Bruce wrote:My oldest son was reading that it was distilled spirits that stopped the Mongol invasion of Europe. The mongols reached the cities of buda and pest on the Danube in Hungary, in 1235,and stopped for a month to rest. The local city leaders came to make peace, and brought and barrel of local spirits with them as a peace gift. The mongol armies were being lead by the three generals who took over after Genghis khan died.Despite the warning, they refused to water down the drinks, and died that night. The Mongol return gift the the west? How to ferment and preserve milk products....Yogurt.
This is an interesting notion except that there were probably several other factors involved in the Mongol withdraw. There was 4,000 miles of nothingness between the center of Mongolia and Budapest. With three armies the Golden Horde “crossed from Asia into Europe in an orgy of violence and destruction”. The northern most army ravished parts of Russia and Poland, the other two obliterated hapless victims along the Danube River or Carpathian Mountains.

Subutai was the Mongol general and primary military strategist of Genghis Khan and Ögedei Khan. He conquered or overran more territory than any other commander in history. He devised the campaign that destroyed both the Hungarian and Polish armies within two days of each other, by forces over five hundred kilometers apart. Subutai died in Mongolia in 1248.

Some three hundred years later this same area of central Europe (Austria, Hungary and Poland) would be the terminus of another invading empire. As the crow flies, Vienna is about 132 miles from Budapest, and 200 from Krakow. Ottoman expansion into central Europe was first stopped at the “Siege of Vienna" in 1529. Between 120,000 and 300,000 wet, muddy and cold Muslims failed to take Vienna from the locals and mercenaries purchased by the Hapsburgs. A century and a half later another army of about 300,000 Ottomans would suffer defeat in the 1683 “Battle of Vienna”. This conflict included the “largest known cavalry charge in history” (probably from Polish Winged Hussars - but they faced a large Sapahi contingent). The “Holy League” would begin to push the Ottomans out of Europe with the 1686 “Battle of Buda”.

None of this has anything to do with whiskey or brandy except that during these long sieges - Nicholas and his high paid Landsknecht & Doppelsöldners probably drank the town dry. Repeatedly...
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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It could have been over the a week, but the Muslims don't drink!
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Bushman wrote:THIRSTY WORK BEING HOLY
Wooden casks weren't (and still aren't) completely airtight, so a certain amount of whisky evaporated as it was left in them to mature. Because alcohol vapor is lighter than, air it rose upwards, towards the heavens - so it was nicknamed 'the angels share'.
And with the revenures they take the Devils Share.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Bushman wrote:In 1870 wine makers in France noticed something strange and alarming. Their vines were turning brown and dying. There were no new shoots, no green leaves, no grapes to make wine. It was a disaster!
A tiny aphid-like insect had migrated from America. It attacked and killed grapevines, halting wine production throughout Europe for years. Without wine, there was no brandy; and so, for whiskey distillers, the attack became a blessing in disguise. Their marketing teams persuaded the upper classes in England and elsewhere that blended whisky would be just the thing to replace their brandy. Sales soared and the 1880's and 1890's saw a Whisky Boom.
Those mites also attacked the marachino cherry trees that where used to make Cherry Brandy. That particular Cherry Brandy had a Medical Dispensery designation. The distillers replaced it with a corrupted version that no longer worked as a sedative like it had and the item went out of use because it was no longer available.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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So I borrowed what turned out to be quite a captivating book from the library, only to have to return it until it became available last week. It was written by Jess Carr and titled:

The Second Oldest Profession - An Informal History of Moonshining in America.

The book was published in 1972, and although quite dated, appears accurate and shares facts that must have required a bit of thoughtful, organized research. What I thought might be a historical illustration of how early immigrant households prioritized the duties of home distilling, the book deals largely with the practices, ingenuity and adventures of illicit distillers during Prohibition. For me, perhaps the biggest revelation from the book was to learn how massively pervasive alcohol consumption was in America before Prohibition, and how after Prohibition it only seemed to mushroom.

Here is a small snippet to illustrate this:

"The era of prohibition seems a terribly long time ago, and yet there is today a similarity of daily occurrences which approach those days more realistically than the average citizen is aware. The city of Atlanta seems unable to eradicate the 'nip joints' which plague its alleys and back streets. Some of the estimated 35,000 gallons of moonshine per week said to be consumed or sold there is provided by stills operating in the city itself. Like it or not, Atlanta is the moonshine capital of the nation.

Tennessee has a problem almost equally severe. Moonshine liquor flows into Chattanooga at the rate of 1,000 gallons per day and into Memphis at a rate of 1,500 - 2,500 gallons per day. Perhaps, as many enforcement authorities believe, illicit distilling is impossible to control, much less wipe out."
“Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore, always carry a small snake.”

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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Wow Twisted I wonder if those statistics are true today as they were in 1972.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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.
I don't think so. Apparently, back when the cost of sugar in GA tripled, the cost of a gallon of hooch went from $6 to $15. Sales plummeted and so did the number of stillers, and understandably, the number of still busts.

Over the past 10 years, though, since the emergence of micro-distilleries across America, a number of legit southern distillers have popped up, re-creating a modern version of original corn 'shine. Equipped with all of today's modern 'stilling techniques and tools, sales are booming.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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kiwi Bruce wrote: Fri Nov 20, 2015 4:39 pm
... the Benedictine order of St Michel's turned to their books and were soon distilling. This started off as medicine ...
There were many Catholic monastic denominations. Some prominent ones would be the Benedictines, Franciscans, Cistercians, Dominicans, Augustinians, Trappists, Carthusians and Jesuits. A few distilled liquor.

The French liqueur Benedictine dates back to 1510. The three most prominent flavorings in Bénédictine are Angelica, Hyssop and Lemon Balm and it's aged about a year and a half. I have not had a sip of Bénédictine in at least 20 years, so its taste is not fresh in my mind. I do know though that it is sweet and much more palatable than green Chartreuse. Chartreuse liqueur has been produced by French Carthusian Monks since 1737. They make both a yellow and a stronger green version. The green gets bottled at 110 proof and somehow they manage to stuff 130 different types of roots, herbs and flowers into it. Its horrible. I had a bottle once and it took me 7-8 years to use it up.

Speaking of Franciscans and Benedictines reminded me of the movie “The Name Of The Rose” (both sects are represented there). The first two picture below are snapshots from the movie, showing 3 different retorts. These hand made replicas (and other props) used in this movie were considered so authentic looking that several found their way into museum displays later.
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The last two pictures were snapshots taken from “Master and Commander”. At sea for a year or more already, the crew takes some R&R on one of the Galapagos islands and breaks out the still to cook some cactus juice. I'm curious about that antique condenser.
vlcsnap-2017-08-03-20h48m20s387.jpg
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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contrahead wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2020 11:09 pm

I'm curious about that antique condenser.

It's a muffler from a 57 chevy ! :lol:
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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In 1764, the golfers at St Andrews decided to combine the first four short holes into two, to produce a round of 18 holes, though it was still 10 holes of which 8 were played twice. Thus was born the 18-hole round, though it would be hundred years before there were eighteen holes and other courses followed suit.

Falsely some believe that because there are 18 jiggers in a bottle of Scotch that when playing you should have a shot on every hole. And this came about at St. Andrew Golf Course.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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kiwi Bruce wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:06 am
It's a muffler from a 57 chevy ! :lol:
mufflershot007c.jpg
By accident I happened upon an educational video today where I saw that “57 Chevy muffler” again; and how it was used. It was water condenser that hung on a cook stove in a ship, and could be used to distill fresh water from salt water! Look to about 11:42 in the video for more. The video also mentions but does not adequately explain an “Elm Tree Pump” @ 10:40; a bilge pump made of this wood because it does not rot. Ships like this used enormous amounts of oak wood.



The HMS Victory was already about 40 years old (laid down 1767) by the time of the Napoleonic Wars (1803 +23 yrs). She was a “1st Rate”--- “Ship of the Line”; with a crew of 850 men and 110 guns. She was Nelson's flagship when he was killed at Trafalgar.

In 1803 the British had 33 other ships of the line just like her, plus 86 frigates in active service; but also this number of ships again, out of commission in reserve. The Royal Navy had about 145,000 sailors in service at the time. But the big Battleships (that what First Rate ships were called back then) (needed 100+ guns or 1,000+ men to qualify) were unseaworthy. They were difficult to steer, rolled a lot and didn't have enough space to stow provisions for long hauls. Strictly summertime vessels that mostly stayed anchored at port, unless there was some shooting to be done.
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Re: Whisky a very peculiar history

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Here’s a link to an interesting story about how whiskey may have saved the life of the head baker on the titanic. Enjoy

https://www.historydefined.net/charles-joughin/
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