White-Collar Moonshine
The urban gourmet gets into home distilling
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When he gets off work, John, 28, makes whiskey. The culinary school graduate and café manager buys a type of processed corn at a home-brewing store, ferments it with water and yeast, and runs this “mash” through a still. He barrels the resulting corn liquor to age. He’s accumulated 20 gallons that he hopes will be transformed from hootch to mellow whiskey by New Year’s Eve 2009.
“I want to make a quality, higher-end whiskey—not like Jack Daniel’s,” says John, who, like the other home distillers interviewed for this story, asked that his real name and that of the large Northern California city in which he lives not be used, for fear of federal prosecution.
This moonshine still was bought legally and can be used for distilling water or essential oils.
Moonshining, the criminal act of distilling your own spirits, is typically associated with hillbilly rebels from the rural South or bathtub-gin swillers from Gatsby-era Prohibition. But recently, distilling’s become the hobby du jour of urban dwellers with a geeky interest in fine food and drink. Gone are the days of using a car radiator as a condenser and a campfire as your heat source. Many of today’s yuppie moonshiners buy their stills online, and learn how to use them from friends, Web-based forums, and small-press books. And though corn liquor is still a classic, felonious foodies are experimenting with everything from brandy to absinthe. For example, in
“We go to these conferences on distilling at Cornell University Cooperative Extension, geared towards commercial distillers and labs, but you’ll get these [moonshiners] who are dedicated, bordering on fanatical, just doing it at home. They’ll come up and want to tell me all about what they’re making,” says Ralph Erenzo, who along with co-owner Brian Lee runs craft whiskey distillery Tuthilltown Spirits, of Gardiner, New York. “They’re coming up with very interesting things.”
Carl Pincher, 50, the
“I’m sure that in a few more years I’ll say, ‘I really make something nice and drinkable,’” says Pincher. “But right now I’m just dabbling.”
A Wild Past
Although the new breed of moonshiners is more likely to stockpile back issues of The New Yorker than firearms, they’re part of a long history of anti-government rebellion. Home distilling, illegal in most other countries (
Prohibition, in place in the
Making wine and beer at home became legal after Prohibition ended (wine immediately, beer in 1978), but making spirits without a commercial license remains a federal crime. Getting a commercial license is an expensive and rigorous process.
Periodic attempts to legalize spirit production for personal use (most recently in a bill introduced by U.S. Representative Bart Stupak of
“There’s this mentality of, ‘Beer and wine are good alcohols, and spirits are bad alcohol,’” says Erenzo, of Tuthilltown Spirits.
The new class of home distillers don’t see it that way. “It’s so stupid, because it’s such a fun, interesting thing, and you’re not hurting anyone,” says Ben Andrews, a cooking school instructor in
Most home distillers buy a still which cost about $500 and are legal to own. That’s because they also serve legal functions, such as purifying water and making essential oils and essences from plants for perfume. Both types of stills work on the same principle: First the “mash,” or your alcoholic base—for example, fermented apple mush for Calvados or fermented corn for corn whiskey—is heated in a pot. When the ethanol (the “good” alcohol you’re trying to isolate) reaches its boiling point of 78°C (172°F), it turns into vapor that collects in another part of the still. As the ethanol vapor cools, it returns to a liquid state. That liquid is your homemade spirit.
On average, five gallons of mash produce about a gallon of 150-proof liquor, which, using the type of small pot still favored by urban enthusiasts, can take as long as three hours.
How Dangerous Is It?
Hootch hobbyists insist that distilling’s dangerous reputation is based on misinformation, or on unsafe backwoods practices they know better than to employ. The common perception is that stills often blow up, or that it’s easy to accidentally produce poisonous liquor that can make you go blind.
“I got my start distilling in my garage at home, and I had these fears,” says Lance Winters, now head distiller at the commercial artisanal distillery Hangar One, in
Methanol, or wood alcohol, a byproduct of distillation along with ethanol, can cause blindness if drunk in massive quantities. But, as Winters and other commercial distillers point out, methanol boils at a lower temperature than ethanol does. This means that home distillers can easily cut a lot of methanol from their end product simply by monitoring the temperature of the mash and dumping the still’s first flush of booze (known in spirits-making parlance as “the heads”), which contains mostly methanol.
“When you buy moonshine from some guy in the mountains, he’s not cutting out the heads,” speculates Erenzo. “The legendary blindness, if it even exists, is the result of drinking impure alcohol.”
Most stills are not highly pressurized pieces of equipment. The hazard is mainly in using a gas burner or other open flame as the heat source (as did backwoods distillers during Prohibition). Like smoking a cigarette at a gas station, exposing an open flame to ethanol creates the risk of explosion. (When touring the Woodford Reserve bourbon distillery in
“The way most stills blew up in the old days was, the revenuers would cram sticks of dynamite under them,” says Winters.
The biggest risk to high-end home distillers is getting caught. Although busting moonshiners isn’t the concern of local and federal authorities that it once was, there are still serious ramifications if you do get caught: Illegal distilling carries a potential 10-year prison sentence, and if the accused used his house as home base for the crime, it can be subject to civil forfeiture. Last year, there were three federal indictments for illegal liquor production. A spokesperson for the Tax and Trade Bureau refused to discuss details of the cases pending trial. But a Department of Justice press release revealed that one indictment was the result of an undercover sting of a father-son duo allegedly producing and selling whiskey illegally in
Still, for many hobbyists, these cases belong to a world that feels far removed.
“I know it’s illegal, but so is smoking pot, and people do that all the time and don’t get busted,” says Cameron Black, 26, from
Many high-end home distillers stress the fact that they’re not out to make money, but rather to further the culinary arts. This appears to make them feel they are standing on higher moral ground—and a safer higher ground.
“You’re allowed to do all sorts of crazy things in this country. I’m allowed to smoke a cigarette before I get on a plane and go bungee jump,” says Andrews, the brandy maker from
Published March 02, 2007
The Rum Runners
By the first two decades of the Twentieth century many aspiring boat-building companies had begun establishing their businesses however, a single event in American history would provide an impetus for their growth and have a profound impact on modern culture.
On December 16th 1920, in response to the mounting pressures of middle class Americans known as the Temperance Movement, the Government passed the 18th Amendment more commonly known as the Volstead Act that prohibited the sale, possession or consumption of alcohol in the
North of the border however, Canadians had been employing restricted sales of alcohol to its indigenous peoples since 1901 and by 1916 most provinces were further legislated under the Temperance Act. While it wasn’t illegal to manufacture, export or consume alcohol, it was illegal to sell alcohol in some provinces, a law that would be repealed in
Rum running found its roots in the Volstead Act of 1920 and in response to prohibition many commercial charter boat operators became opportunists, heading out from ports in Atlantic Canada to as far south as the Florida Keys to neighboring islands in the Caribbean in search of their illegal cargo’s.
In an effort to increase their profits, rumrunners would often water down or re-label alcohol to fetch higher market prices. One operator however, Capt. William McCoy, gained a reputation for selling brand name undiluted alcohol and today, is the origin of the modern phrase “The Real McCoy” used to describe the genuine article.
Alcohol could be purchased inexpensively in the
Great risks were often undertaken with a view to great rewards and many an empire was founded on the illegal distribution of alcohol.
In 1921 Government patrols in sovereign waters that later developed into the Canadian and
No longer wanting to take the risk of having their vessels seized, rumrunners began holding outside the 12-mile limit in International waters off both coasts of America, opting instead to offload the risk of prosecution and seizure to those that were purchasing the alcohol. These lines of alcohol-laden ships were referred to as “Rum Rows” and the Government was powerless to prosecute crews or seize vessels and their cargos, as long as they remained outside the 12-mile limit.
As the distribution of alcohol became more prevalent, the use of smaller faster runabouts was employed. Most of the mahogany runabouts of Garwood or Hacker design were capable of speeds in excess of 40kts and could easily outrun the Coast Guards displacement hulled revenue cutters, making for shore to offload their alcohol at predestined rendezvous points.
Catching rumrunners in
Additionally, since alcohol wasn’t illegal in Canada, the majority of ships carrying alcohol cargos were doing so legally and therefore found it easier to camouflage undeclared contraband in their holds.
With
For one man however, the promise of riches and a better life was all he needed. His actions gave birth to a crime syndicate that made him one of
One of
Bessie Starkman, a Jewish woman who was married and lived with her husband in the ward, answered her door one day to Italian born immigrant Rocco Perri, who was responding to an advertisement she had placed offering room and board.
Rocco took the room and as time went on, Rocco and Bessie became torrid lovers who fantasized about a better life of wealth and social status promised in the early 1920’s.
By 1923, Bessie had left her husband and both she and Rocco moved to a lavish home located in
This was the beginning of the Calabrian crime syndicate that began with distribution of alcohol during the prohibition years and by the late 1920’s had expanded to drugs, extortion, racketeering and prostitution. While Rocco posed as the front man, Bessie his common-law wife ruled the organization with an iron fist and in fact was the only Jewish woman in history to ever run the Mob.
With connections in
The St. Clair River that separated
Given the short distance across the river it was commonplace to see Canadians rowing to the American shores and back several times a day. By the following week you would see the same people with a brand new outboard motor on their boats and after several more weeks, you would see them in brand new mahogany runabouts that cost in excess of two years annual income for the average wage earner.
Meanwhile back on the east coast of
Joseph Kennedy, son of Irish Catholic immigrants and patriarch of the infamous Kennedy family was a client of Rocco Perri’s.
Joseph Kennedy, who was most recognizable as the father of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, became affectionately known as a “Baptist Bootlegger”.
By the mid 1920’s the Volstead Act was being reviewed by his allies in the American Government with a view to repealing it, but Kennedy was making so much money while prohibition was in existence, that he secretly aligned himself with Temperance Movement supporters in an effort to keep prohibition in place.
With a certain degree of control at that point and insider information during the prohibition period, he positioned himself as the sole import agent of several brands of alcohol, purchasing millions of dollars worth of stock. The day prohibition ended in 1933 his company re-sold the stock legally making tens of millions of dollars of profit.
While subversively controlling the distribution of illegal alcohol during prohibition, Kennedy disguised his activities as the legitimate owner of an investment firm, trading in the largely unregulated stock market.
In what would be considered highly illegal by today’s governance of the stock exchange, Joseph Kennedy manipulated the stock values of companies in cooperation with a pool of investors up or down depending on the position of the pool at the time.
In 1928 Kennedy pulled hundreds of millions of dollars out of the markets just prior to the market crash of 1929 and then subsequently made a secondary fortune on his short positions.
In the early 1930’s Joseph Kennedy funded the election of President Theodore Roosevelt who made him Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission, closing the door behind him to anyone else intent on amassing a fortune in illegal trading practices.
In the long term
With the significant connections Rocco Perri and Bessie Starkman had made from the eastern seaboard of the
In 1930 however, Bessie Starkman was becoming arrogant and a threat to the continued success of the mob’s operations. She was killed by a double shotgun blast in the doorway of her
After a brief lapse following the death of Bessie, Rocco regained control of the Mob with the help of a second Jewish woman named Annie Newman who continued to build his empire during prohibition. Annie was instrumental in bribing the Canadian Establishment to evade prosecution in
Back in Canada, with Government controlled liquor boards now in place and with the help of Rocco’s Chicago connection Al Capone, Annie engineered a scheme of “prohibition in reverse”, smuggling alcohol back across the border into Ontario to sell to Canadians de-void of the Governments imposed excise tax, making money as alcohol moved in both directions
Mounting pressure for the incarceration of Rocco Perri came as a result of a growing number of articles that appeared in the Toronto Star newspaper by staff journalists Ernest Hemmingway and Morley Callaghan. Hemmingway would later be recognized as a Pulitzer Prize winning Author, with he and Callaghan living out the remainder of their years in
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been tracking Rocco’s movements for years and were finally able to incarcerate him for the duration of the war years under the War Measures Act. Upon his release, Rocco disappeared and it is alleged he is in a barrel full of concrete at the bottom of the
Prohibition came to an end in the
