Moonshine is going from backwoods to boutique
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Growing up in Philippi, W.Va., moonshine was part of the local culture for Glen Price.
At family reunions or just visiting friends, the spirit with the illegal pedigree was always part of life.
“There was always a bottle of moonshine,” he said. “It was always there, passed around the campfire.”
Today, Price and his wife, Tara, are continuing that Appalachian tradition with Black Draft Distillery, which produces moonshine that is sold throughout the Eastern Panhandle and 20 counties in the Mountain State.
The Prices opened Black Draft Distillery in December 2013, with moonshine as their first product.
Where moonshine — also known as white whiskey, white lightning, hooch and mountain dew — once was thought of as more of a hillbilly drink, the legalized liquor has been served up in such posh places today that the original moonshiners would have scoffed at the idea.
Slowly, since 2010, moonshine has been becoming a top-shelf kind of drink as food chains such as Famous Dave’s have been serving it up by the Mason jarfuls.
And craft cocktails are starting to be the hottest trend for those who partake in the spirits.
For those who have tasted moonshine that sends fire down the throat, the Prices promise theirs isn’t your grandfather’s moonshine.
“We said, ‘let’s do it our way,’” Glen said. “We didn’t realize how much a demand that there would be.”
The history
Moonshine has a long and rich history in the hills of West Virginia and its southern neighbors.
Historians guess that moonshine has been made in the Appalachian Mountains since the 1700s, introduced to the region by Scot-Irish immigrants.
In 1791, the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania was fought between the moonshiners and the U.S. government over the taxation of distilled liquor.
By the 20th century, when work was hard to find, moonshiners hid their stills way up into the mountains to avoid the law, running the ‘shine to those willing to pay for it.
“Moonshine is just synonymous with West Virginia,” Tara said while standing in the distillery behind the Prices’ home. “In Kentucky, you have your bourbon. In Tennessee, you have your whiskey. In West Virginia, it’s moonshine.”
The Prices, who used to own Percheron draft horses, found their stalls empty after having to put down their favorite horse, Biscuit. The horses, Tara said, were another way they connected with the local culture and West Virginia history.
Wanting to find a new hobby, Glen started dabbling in making moonshine.
“To be a moonshiner, you always start out with a little bit of notoriety of kind of back door. We had a friend who used to make moonshine for us, apple pie, and Glen really wanted to learn how to make it,” Tara said.
But when the idea grew from just a quart to gallons and purchasing a still, Tara suggested to Glen, who works in information technology for the federal government, that maybe it was time to get their permits and make it a legal business.
Six months later, they were producing their first moonshine, and it wasn’t like anything that had been sold in the mountains before.
What is moonshine?
Moonshine is unaged corn whiskey.
“Moonshine is where you take grains — corn, rye, wheat, barley — and basically convert it into beer,” Glen said. “At the end of the day, you’re adding yeast and sugar to cook grains, and you make a beer. That’s basically the idea behind a brewery. What distillers do is that they run it through their stills, meaning they cook that at about 180 to190 degrees. What happens is that’s when alcohol actually turns into a vapor. Once you capture the vapors, that’s distilling.”
Glen pointed out the stills behind him with a tube where moonshine was being dripped into a Mason jar. He said when the vapors cool, they turn back into a liquid, and the result is moonshine. To make it into bourbon or whiskey, the liquid is put int oak barrels to age.
“But for old-schoolers, when you run it up into the hills — that was it,” he said. “You take that, add a little water to it so that it’s drinkable, it’s about 50 percent alcohol, put it in a Mason jar and that’s how you sold moonshine.”
The Prices believe in producing a local product with local ingredients, and have formed relationships with local farmers and businesses.
“We’re lucky enough that our grains are grown within 10 miles of where we’re standing,” he said, noting the corn does not feature genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. To produce the moonshine, Glen said “it takes from the grain to bottle about two weeks, about seven days of fermenting.” The fermentation process depends upon the weather — in hot weather, it goes faster; in cold weather, it’s slower.
“It all varies on the weather, which is kind of the fun about the whiskey process, from my perspective,” he said.
Under their Black Draft label, the Prices produce six to 12 gallons a day, twice a week. They started with a 10-gallon still and have grown to an 80 gallon-still, with hopes of expanding to one that holds 200 to 300 gallons in the future as their bourbon production ramps up.
Although Glen uses stills similar to those his ancestors would have used, the result is different. Moonshiners’ recipes differ from distiller to distiller. The secret is in the corn mash, which is a guarded by any moonshiner worth his salt.
“Some people may make use more corn, some people may use more wheat, some people may use more rye,” Glen said. “Rye makes things more spicy. Wheat makes more things sweet.”
Those who taste Black Draft moonshine might be surprised by its smoothness.
“It’s going to have a kick, but I think you’re going to be surprised the way we distill it,” Tara said. “It’s going to have a finish with the corn because we leave the corn flavor in there. If you’ve tried moonshine before and there was an afterburn to it, it’s probably because it wasn’t distilled with corn as it’s main grain source or it was distilled too high and it had taken all of the flavor out of it. We keep the flavor in.”
From backwoods to boutique
Tara credits the Eastern Panhandle’s agritourism for helping moonshine become popular.
“I think the popularity from the culture has now made it more of a household word, and through that has allowed now the opportunities from bars and restaurants to look for more farm to table in their menu planning, and moonshine is definitely part of that right now, since it is something that comes from a local source,” she said.
The Prices first used an old-school recipe, but they found it was too harsh for today’s palates.
“If you’re doing up straight-up moonshine, it’s pretty harsh,” Glen said.
When the Prices started to produce their moonshine, they knew bartenders would want to know how to serve it and home drinkers would want to know what to do with it.
When she and Glen started to produce theirs, they wanted to make sure the drink was pleasant.
“As we developed our recipe, I started to get to know more and more about corn whiskey,” Price said. “And how when you make the spirit in a way that you keep the corn flavor in there, instead of distilling it out and making it as high alcohol content as you can legally make it, it really softened the end.”
Mixology magic
That’s when they decided to make their unaged whiskey in such as way that it would be a great base for any cocktail.
“So then I started studying up and learning a lot about mixology, and from there I started making some cocktail recipes that people responded to,” Tara said.
Through the tasting process, they also learned how to take the harshness away.
“I noticed there were so many different flavors,” Tara said. “I noticed they were distilling it from neutral grains, so it was a high alcohol content. And the reason that the moonshiners always made the apple pie and strawberry moonshine was because they were producing such high-octane moonshine that you had to add something super sweet to it to cut the taste. Otherwise, you were spitting and gagging drinking this stuff.”
The Prices wanted to make sure they balanced the corn taste in the moonshine, not mask it with sugar.
“We noticed a lot of those flavored ones from the brands on the shelves were also lower alcohol content,” she said. “We thought, ‘why can’t we produce a high enough proof content — which ours is 100 proof with 50 percent alcohol — but leave the corn flavor in there?’ And that happens through carefully making the cuts during our distillation so that we keep that corn flavor in there and we’re not distilling it out and without making it essentially vodka at that point.”
Although Tara doesn’t have a mixology background, she found a passion in learning the science of making drinks.
“Through this business, it sparked an interest in me learning how certain alcohols play off of each other. Going back to the corn, when you mix corn with something that’s sweet, there’s too much competition through the two flavors,” she said. “You need to add something to neutralize that corn flavor. That came from experimentation and a lot of reading up on classic cocktail recipes and learning how they work off of each other. Those who are really into the business of mixology understand how the layering of ingredients will make a full-bodied, balanced (drink). not just taking something and masking something that’s already high proof.”
Using their moonshine as a base, they used local ingredients and came up with recipes.
“If you’re in the mood for an apple pie, I can give you a great apple pie recipe. If you’re in the mood for a watermelon margarita, I can give you a great watermelon margarita. If you love Bloody Marys, I can make a great Bloody Mary with our moonshine,” she said. “I say, ‘One jar, unlimited possibilities.’”
Tara develops a new recipe about once a month. For peach season, she came up with a sweet-tea recipe highlighting fresh peaches. For apple season, she has an apple pie recipe. For the holidays, she has Sleigh Ride, which is an eggnog recipe with a peppermint kiss at the end.
Tara and Glen suggest storing the moonshine in the freezer until ready to use.
Using suggestions from customers, she has developed recipes that can be served in any glassware available, especially Mason jars.
“My inspiration is to make a lot of the recipes that everyone will enjoy and can easily make at home without feeling like I have to get all these different liquors, different spirits and mixing them one particular brand of this or that,” she said. “I like things where you can get them from the local farmers market, and I like things that you can make at the local supermarket and make it easy or as complicated as you want it to be.”
