Moonshiners Manual

by Michael Barleycorn

Originally published in 1976 The Moonshine Manual is a wonderful book if you live on a farm and can drive to town for a bag corn. Along with the typewriter the town Feed & Seed store have disappeared. Today there is a renaissance in micro-brewing and craft distilling. The principals of distilling described is this book are correct but the methods used by today's "urban" moonshiner have changed because every town in America has a home brew shop where he or she can take a home brewing class and buy his ingredients to make beer and moonshine. (Mostly yeast and sugar.) The techniques described in this book are not used by today's modern moonshiner because better how-to information (books) and equipment are readily available. It is estimated that there are 15,000 modern moonshiners in the USA and the industry is currently going through a renaissance. Some home brew shops and internet brewing supply companies are selling the15-gallon pot stills like hot cakes

Genres: Nonfiction

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Amanda up North · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saved this book from the refuse boxes at our library (unwanted donations that go to a company that shreds them) and gave it to my husband to read some time ago. Totally random, but one of my better husband-book successes. He loves the thing.

I finally got around to reading it because our neighbor was trying to come up with a name for her handsome new horse that would honor his bloodline of bootleg whisky names. There are many entertaining names for bootleg whisky in this book! Fun history on moonshine, very entertaining read.

If you can find a copy of this 1970's treasure, it would make a great gift for any microbrewer or distiller in your life.
I'm neither brewer nor distiller, nor connoisseur of moonshine. I just enjoyed how hilariously articulated it is. The laughs I got from it were good medicine.