old school moonshine mash ?

[shadylane]

Perhaps that was wrong of me to say. I know some took great pride in their recipes while others was about quantity over quality. What I've got to sample locally is one of the reasons I decided to make my own, I could do better. They all claim their recipes were handed down as well. I shouldn't have ASSumed based on just my experiences.

I've had the same experience with shiner's that "claim their recipes were handed down"
All of the recipes were sugar based and they didn't know squat about mashing and very little about proper distilling.

[likker liker]

I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your past. My grandparents all made likker. It was a long time ago I heard the stories of what they went through and reading this thread had me remembering them.
Thanks

[NcGunny]

Recipes handed down are just that...the guy may have never even tried malt. His/her family may have had access to sugar all the time..so its what they used. I dont disapprove of sugar heads,I just didnt grow up around its use. To this day my Grandpa would be bitching.."The corn is different nowadays". All corn is just to time consuming for some people to do. I know one girl that makes a cornmeal sugarhead and I swear it tastes like a AG to me. I think most people visualize 100% original to be prohibition days type alcohol with mass quantities being churned out.

[rad14701]

I think you'll find that sugarheads were introduced by syndicated crime rings during the prohibition and that all grain was more the norm before that... And it was those same ruthless syndicated crime rings that started adding things like formaldehyde, methanol, and who knows what else into their spirits to further increase profits... Remaining competitive was what pushed so many old fashioned backwoods moonshiners to adopt the sugarhead method to stretch the fruits and grains that extra bit so they weren't undersold by the real rotgut that the gangsters were peddling...

[NcGunny]

Old School in definition should be Rye,barley,oats,corn,water,gypsum. Nothing else...but depending on when your people started producing..Old School might be..sugar,water,fruits,corn,fertilizers,oats etc. I remember hearing lotsa old guys saying they traded the Japanese junk buyers for sugar. This was mid 30's... They came around buying scrap steel to send home on ships. Buyers paid in either cash or sugar and if you lived along ways from a store you took sugar if you were into production.

[freshwaterjellyfish]

the oldest of moonshine mash was likely that of fruit... i wonder how many people went blind or suffered from a failing liver before they realized the diff b/w ethanol and methanol.

[Tater]

Id think first would been honey.But who knows likker from cane would been one earliest in USA as rum was made by colonist

[bearriver]

Id think first would been honey.But who knows likker from cane would been one earliest in USA as rum was made by colonist

I just looked it up and you would be right... Probably. Mead is the first recorded alcoholic beverage that humans ever intentionally produced in what is now called Greece.

[Dan P.]

I would put my money on the first distillate having been made from sugar! Raw sugar based "wines" were very popular in Asia, where distilling likely originated. It's likely that both sugar and distilling came to Europe during or shortly after the Crusades, perhaps even earlier? First moonshine was probably rum!

[freshwaterjellyfish]

i read in Italy fruit (grapes i believe)..ill look for references later
...be nice to see some old school recipes posted....

[freshwaterjellyfish]

for the history dispute, yall might as well show your hand
i got references out the cazoo

[thecroweater]

Id think first would been honey.But who knows likker from cane would been one earliest in USA as rum was made by colonist

I just looked it up and you would be right... Probably. Mead is the first recorded alcoholic beverage that humans ever intentionally produced in what is now called Greece.

Yeah very likely the first whiskies were partial sugar heads made from Braggot in Wales somewhere around 300 AD, why Braggot when beer was common? Well the monks at some monastery on Bardsey isle Wales so tjat is what tjey distilled