Q&A for How to Make Moonshine Mash

You can buy flavoring or put sliced fruit, like peaches and apples, inside the bottle for a month or two.

Yes, as results tend to be better when you stir it before distilling, to make the mash work.

Yes indeed. If you allow any solids in your wash, they will settle to the bottom of your cooking pot and burn. If you've ever had a few pinto beans burn in the pot, you'll know what kind of taste you'll have in your liquor.

I tend to stay away from "adding" yeast. Instead I use whole feed corn sprouted in the ground in a burlap sack for three to four days. When the sprouts are ready, I pour them into a small kiddie pool, smash about half of the sprouts with a rolling pin and leave them in the sun for three to four days, or until completely dry, taking care to cover them at night. This step eliminates the need to add yeast because it collects natural wild yeast from the air, giving your moonshine a cleaner flavor.

Use a 5 gallon bucket and drill a hole the size of your tube in the side of the bucket at the bottom. Set the coil of copper in the bucket and feed the end through the hole you made. Attach the copper tube at the top of your bucket to your pressure cooker. Seal the bucket around the tube at the hole you created to keep the bucket watertight. Add water and ice to the bucket or keep a hose running in the bucket to change the water over. This water is only for cooling down the vapor inside of the copper tube condensing it to a liquid. The alcohol will drip out of the tube on the end you have going through the bucket.

You can replace the cornmeal with strawberries in the recipe. This is how my family has done it for generations.

It's the sugars extracted from malting process in grains. There are both dry and liquid, and a good recipe would actually specify which was intended.

It'll take about 3 or 3 1/2 weeks to have the mash ready to make your brew.

Yes, you should throw away the first 60 ml. This is because 60 ml is when it's recommended that you start to boil the wash.

From the lower side of $200 to the higher side of $8000, depending on size and materials used.

I've heard turbo yeast, available at amazon and other online retailers, is better and much quicker than bread yeast. However the real pros use malted barley, which has it's own natural yeast and produces a smother tasting finished product.

It has to be crushed or the yeast will have a tough time consuming whole grains. If crush/powder the corn (assuming its dry corn) then it will increase the surface area greatly. If it is non-dry corn, then you can just mash it up.

It is a direct calculation to how much alcohol is in the mash. If you are 10%, then you will get roughly 10% of your mash and whatever water you burp through. I run a 3 gallon still that produces a 140prof heart. I get about 3/4 quart and a 1/2 pint of tails. I then cut the hearts to 110prof and get about a quart. I then process the tails with the next run.