RYES-IN-SHINE MOONSHINE | MIAMI FL

Moonshine is known by many nicknames in English, including Mountain Dew, choop, hooch, homebrew, Mule Kick, Shine, white lightning, white/corn liquor, white/corn whiskey, Pass Around, firewater, and Bootleg. Other languages and countries have their terms for moonshine. (credit: Wikipedia)

Various grains (malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat.

A “pot still” is a distillation apparatus used to distill flavored liquors such as whisky or cognac but not rectified spirits because they are bad at separating congeners. Pot stills operate on a batch distillation basis (as opposed to coffee or column stills that operate continuously). Traditionally constructed from copper, pot stills are made in various shapes and sizes depending on the quantity and style of the spirit. Geographic variations in moonshine still design exist, with certain stills gaining popularity in regions of Appalachia.

At NJoy Spirits Distillery, we chose rye to distill our whiskey. Our rye is 100% grown in Florida, 30% on our ranch, and 70% from other Florida farms.

Distillation was practiced by the Babylonians in Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium BC, with perfumes and aromatics being distilled, but this is subject to uncertain and disputed interpretations of the evidence.

The earliest chemical distillations were by Greeks in Alexandria in the 1st century AD, but these were not distillations of alcohol. The medieval Arabs adopted the distillation technique of the Alexandrian Greeks, and written records in Arabic began in the 9th century, but again, these were not distillations of alcohol. Distilling technology passed from the medieval Arabs to the medieval Latins, with the earliest records in Latin dating back to the early 12th century.

The earliest records of alcohol distillation are in Italy in the 13th century, where alcohol was distilled from wine. Ramon Llull (1232–1315) described the technique early. Its use spread through medieval monasteries, mainly for medicinal purposes, such as the treatment of colic and smallpox. (Some think a shot of fine whiskey can help cure the common cold!)

The art of distillation spread to Ireland and Scotland no later than the 15th century, as did the common European practice of distilling “aqua vitae,” or spirit alcohol, primarily for medicinal purposes. The technique of medicinal distillation eventually passed from a monastic setting to the secular via professional medical practitioners, The Guild of Barber-Surgeons. The earliest mention of whisky in Ireland comes from the seventeenth-century Annals of Clonmacnoise, which attribute the death of a chieftain in 1405 to “taking a surfeit of aqua vitae” at Christmas. In Scotland, the first evidence of whisky production comes from an entry in the Exchequer Rolls for 1494, where malt is sent “to Friar John Cor, by order of the king, to make aqua vitae,” enough to make about 500 bottles.[16]

In 1823, the UK passed the Excise Act, legalizing distillation (for a fee), and this put a practical end to the large-scale production of Scottish moonshine.

By the 1880s, the French brandy industry was devastated by the phylloxera pest that ruined much of the grape crop; as a result, whisky became the primary liquor in many markets.

During the Prohibition era in the United States, lasting from 1920 to 1933, all alcohol sales were banned. The federal government made an exemption for whisky prescribed by a doctor and sold through licensed pharmacies. The Walgreens pharmacy chain grew from 20 retail stores to almost 400. (Whiskey Sales drove the growth of our Walgreens!)

DISTILLATION

Modern stills are made of stainless steel with copper innards (piping, for example, will be lined with copper along with copper plate inlays along still walls). The most straightforward standard distillation apparatus is a pot still with a single heated chamber and a vessel to collect purified alcohol.

Column stills behave like single-pot stills formed in a long vertical tube. A single pot still charged with wine might yield a vapor enriched with 40–60% alcohol, while a column can still achieve a vapor alcohol content of 95.6%, an azeotropic mixture of alcohol and water.

We achieve our 75% ABV (150-Proof) Rye’s-in-Shine Moonshine in a double, not triple, distillation process. Our method uses a higher heat profile to accomplish this.

Most moonshines are all made from the heads and tails, not the hearts. Most moonshines are corn, so they flavor it and put fruit in so people buy it. Our competition Moonshine is also typically only 80-proof—children’s play—compared to our Ryes-in-Shine Moonshine 150-Proof. You can instantly taste the difference!

AGING

Both then and now, moonshine is whiskey as it comes out of the still: no oak barrels, no caramel color, no aging. It’s just straight liquor from fermented corn or wheat mash.

Ryes-in-Shine Moonshine is gin-like in flavor profile but without the juniper flavor of a standard gin. It is very earthy and has a grassy-licorice taste. It makes an excellent limoncello and is perfect in Bloody Marys and Cosmopolitans. Very appealing!

PACKAGING

We bottle and label our Ryes-In-Shine Moonshine in simple, transparent bottles so the purity shines through. Most moonshine is sold at or near an alcoholic strength of 40% abv, which is the statutory minimum in some countries. However, the strength can vary, and cask-strength whisky may have as much as twice that alcohol percentage. Our RYES-IN-SHINE MOONSHINE is 150-proof (75% ABV), making it a rare moonshine worldwide.