[SR-FB] Bill Tompson's "Hooch"

[Laura Beinbrech]

Interesting... I'm I guess of fairly typical ancestry for southern PA (which is where my dad's family settled in the early 1700's):  German (Swiss-German for my dad's family), Scots & Irish, but with a few twists, like Hebrew, Italian, French & Danish (actually Dane-Scots, or Vikings who swore loyalty to one of the kings of Scotland & were given lands & titles for their service, and since they were all part of a mercenary company that used a banner with the moon on it as their symbol, they all took the surname of "Moon" when they were ennobled, despite none of them actually being related to each other).

The Danish (and to a lesser degree German) part probably explains my occasional need for mead...

[Bart]

Distilling is illigal because if you do it wrong you get the wrong kind of alcohol the one that gets you blind and dead and such things.

Brewing and wine making cant go wrong that way. 

So there is more then Just a tax reason. 

Unfortunatly smuggling has become very difficult (not impossible) for merchant sailors.

[Roadmonkeytj]

37 minutes ago, Bart said:

Distilling is illigal because if you do it wrong you get the wrong kind of alcohol the one that gets you blind and dead and such things.

Brewing and wine making cant go wrong that way. 

So there is more then Just a tax reason. 

Unfortunatly smuggling has become very difficult (not impossible) for merchant sailors.

The blindness is because of the materials used in poor quality stills.   And further increased by poor quality operation.   Plus there's that whole pressurised boiler that can explode and then highly flammable liquid that catches fire afterwards. 

Poor quality copper had a high sulfur content...  "cheep" solder had high lead content.   The resulting by product can cause blindness.   

If you fail to cut your foreshots proper then you get methals in you spirit which is not initially harmful but in enough quantity can severe nausea and vomiting.  

Also not cutting your tails while less harmful then the foreshots introduced minerals that your body can't process.   

Now there's uneducated fellas out there that just mix the whole damn batch together and sell it claiming there ain't no harm  ...  It's just poor quality licker is the truth. 

Explosion is a serious risk constant monitoring of temp is the only true way to prevent this.

But the true danger is the vapor.   Essentially you've done what a combustion engine does and atomised the "fuel" now you have a fire of some sort to heat the mash that loves to expand if the vapor makes contact. 

Grain dust is also highly flamable and can explode in flames under the right conditions

 

As far as merchants...  I talked to one who said they used to smack your legs with a stick to break any bottles you had tucked away in your pants when coming back on board